Photo credit: Darius Krause from Pexels
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
The National Park Service noise maps show that without anthropogenic noise, nature is quiet.
I have measured nighttime noise levels just above or just below 30 dBA in remote parts of Wales, the French Alps, and Sri Lanka.
I was in western Belize last week, at the intersection of the rain forest and the Central American pine forest. Unfortunately my sound meter app wasn’t working, but nature was still quiet. Not as quiet as other remote places I’ve visited, because I was near a waterfall, but I would estimate about 35 dBA.
To allow for uninterrupted sleep, that’s what we should strive for our cities, too.
