Photo credit: Kyle Lui
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
CNET reports that loud restaurants may endanger the hearing of patrons and workers alike. This is not new information. Restaurant noise has been an issue for years. Research presented at the Acoustical Society of America meeting in New Orleans in 2017 documented dangerously high noise levels in restaurants and bars in Manhattan. The researcher subsequently started the SoundPrint site to document information about restaurant noise.
Restaurant workers are in theory protected by laws regarding safe noise levels set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. These limits are based on recommendations from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Unfortunately, the NIOSH recommended noise exposure limits and the higher OSHA permissible exposure limits are far too high to actually protect workers’ hearing. At least workers have these limits for noise to protect their hearing, and workers compensation insurance to compensate them for any hearing loss. The general public has none.
I suppose one could argue that the public can choose not to patronize loud restaurants, but in many if not most cities that’s not really a choice. There generally are no quiet restaurants. If one wants to enjoy a meal in a restaurant rather than dining at home, there are only noisy restaurants to choose from.
The only municipal ordinance governing restaurant noise that I am aware of is in Beverly Hills, CA. The Beverly Hills Municipal Code section 10-3-2703 B.7 states that for restaurants in certain areas of the city, the sound level of live and recorded music must be low enough to ensure that conversations are possible without straining to speak or to be heard. That would appear to be somewhere between 70-75 A-weighted* decibels. To my knowledge, this law has never been enforced.
Restaurant noise is a disability rights issue for people with hearing loss and other auditory disorders.** Quiet Communities, Inc., the parent organization of The Quiet Coalition, has a working group on restaurant noise trying to deal with this issue. The New York Times and Washington Post have covered restaurant noise in recent years. If enough people complain to their local city or town councils about noisy restaurants, maybe more cities will pass restaurant noise ordinances. Maybe these laws will even be enforced.
Only a few decades ago, restaurants were filled with smoke. People complained and smoke-free sections were established, but unfortunately secondhand smoke couldn’t read the signs. When the Environmental Protection Agency declared environmental tobacco smoke (the technical term for secondhand smoke) to be a Class A carcinogen with no known safe level of exposure, suddenly those of us advocating for clean air became health advocates rather than chronic complainers. The world pretty much became smoke free.
Secondhand smoke causes respiratory disease and cancer. Unwanted noise causes auditory disorders. Quieter restaurants, part of a quieter world, will be a better and healthier world for all.
*A-weighting adjusts unweighted sound measurements to approximate the frequencies heard in human speech.
**Noise-induced auditory disorders include hearing loss, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), and hyperacusis (a sensitivity to noise that doesn’t bother others). There are thousands of studies in humans and animals about the noise exposure levels that will cause noise-induced hearing loss, but as best as I can tell none delineating the noise exposure levels causing tinnitus or hyperacusis. Most experts think that if one avoids loud noise, that will also prevent tinnitus and hyperacusis.
