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It was almost like living near the ocean. Inside the apartment, the sound washed over you in an undulating, neverending wave, punctuated by the occasional honking cry of the Skylark or Mustang. At rush hour came the frequent squeal of brakes, and at least once a day, the dull thudding whine of a metal-on-metal meeting. Yes, I’ll never forget our first apartment in Hollywood, the double-paned “soundproof” windows of which were only ten feet from the 101 Freeway overpass, where you couldn’t see the traffic but you could never stop hearing it, even while you slept.
The other bonus was the view: there was a wide embankment built up against the freeway just outside our never-used “porch,” where the residentially-challenged would congregate to catch 40 winks, engage in battle with bottles and sticks (I believe the internet hath dubbed them “bumfights”), and even pursue more amorous objectives ‘neath double-wide sleeping bags. As it turned out, it was easy enough to not look out the window — but the one thing you can’t shut off is your ears. It seemed to affect me more profoundly than my wife, who at one point claimed she “hadn’t heard the freeway for months” (liar!) and even now prefers to have the television on in the background while reading or writing, which continues to baffle me.
I had to face up to the fact that perhaps I was just more sensitive to sound than she, even though by any objective standard, my hearing is no better. Was there something wrong with me? Why weren’t my double-paned windows enough? Well, according to a groundbreaking new study detailed in New Scientist and The Daily Telegraph (I wonder if they still use a telegraph there), noise pollution is a problem for everyone, and not only does it have a “huge impact on health,” it may even be responsible for three in every hundred deaths traditionally blamed on heart attack and stroke. Here’s why:
Noise is linked with heart attack and stroke because it creates chronic stress that keeps our bodies in a state of constant alert. Research published last year by Germany’s Federal Environmental Agency in Berlin shows that even when you are asleep, your ears, brain and body continue to react to sounds, raising levels of stress hormones. However, if these stress hormones are in constant circulation, they can cause long-term physiological changes that could be life-threatening. The end result can be anything from heart failure and strokes to high blood pressure and immune problems.
They go on to estimate that since nearly 7 million people die from heart disease in Europe every year, that equals about 210,000 deaths attributable to noise pollution every year. Furthermore, even if it doesn’t kill you, it can have other negative impacts: when schools are built in especially noisy areas, information retention and test scores go down. Chronic exposure to noise can cause tinnitus. And people who haven’t slept as well during the night are more likely to have accidents during the day (thereby creating the sort of freeway noises that give other people noise fatigue — a vicious cycle!)
Since that first infamous apartment in fabulous Hollywood, we’ve intentionally sought out the quietest parts of LA, and lived in blissful peace for lo these several years. But I’ll never forget what it was like to live with constant noise — and that millions of people (and millions more each year, as our cities grow) still live with it every day. What does your neighborhood sound like?
Comments (37)
Comment
I hear the wind through the trees, songbirds, crickets, and all the watery sounds my pond makes. Except for Friday nights, when there’s guaranteed to be sirens, the highway is a far off hum. Inside the house, I’ve got dog, cat, bird, computer, and decades old fridge.
posted by jen on 8-24-2007 at 9:23 am
My current neighborhood sounds bucolic and suburban, occasional cars, barking dogs, distant sounds from larger streets. Because it’s a quiet neighborhood, it makes the impact from the annoying owner of the souped-up drag racing car with little or no muffler next door even more obnoxious. Especially when they’re out there late at night revving the engine and drinking beers.
I once lived on the top floor of a large building directly adjacent to the wide expanse of I-395, the interstate spur leading from the Beltway into Washington DC. It was an older building, so had only single-pane windows. I did get used to the noise, but I also had to take what I considered extreme measures to protect myself from the noise. I slept with earplugs, which I hated. The sound of rush hour was enough to wake me up from a deep sleep. It always amazed me. I wasn’t waking to particular sounds like accidents or honking horns, but to the increased sound from that many thousands of cars passing below my window. I was very glad when I moved to my next apartment, which overlooked a nature preserve.
posted by Jenny on 8-24-2007 at 9:25 am
Thankfully my neighborhood is pretty quiet. I do live near train tracks but I really don’t hear the passing trains anymore. I will say this, if I am in an environment where the fast paced, loud metal type music is playing I actually find my heart beating faster and it feels like my blood pressure is spiking. I get that ‘over-adrenalined’ type feeling and it makes me crazy!
posted by JaneM on 8-24-2007 at 9:31 am
Sadly, I am a light sleeper. My recently evicted neighbors shook my floors with door slams and my walls with obnoxious bass. A complaint to the landlord got me a Taco Bell splattered car.
My stress level was so high, due to the constant noise, that I 100% attribute that experience to the loss of my job.
Thank goodness they’re gone.
posted by Jai on 8-24-2007 at 9:35 am
My present neighborhood is like any other suburban one. The usual sounds of kids playing puntctuated every once in a while by an across the street neighbor who owns every power tool known to man.
Several years ago my wife and I lived in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood. We lived on the 4th floor and the I-5 highway was literally 40 feet above our building. If anyone knows anything about I-5 in Seattle they know it is mostly elevated due to the geography. Anyway, it was looming above our heads but you didn’t hear too much noise from the vehicles. I did hear a lot of noise from the sea planes taking off and landing on Lake Union. That, however, was a good noise.
One day I did hear a very usual noise. I was reading a book and heard the distinctive sound of cannon. I looked out the window and suddenly remembered the tall ships were in and there was a mock pirate ship battle on the Lake! Some people may have an aparment that overlooks Central Park but I would take the apartment that has mock pirate ship battles anyday.
We also had two bums fighting under the highway over a woman. One guy stabbed the other.
posted by Dusty on 8-24-2007 at 9:50 am
I think there is a difference between white noise and the kind that causes physical distress. I grew up with a yard, a hedge, and a fence between our house and a busy street and train track, and the noise at that distance was white noise to us. The fan that cools us in the summer makes the same kind of white noise. The street noise that is much closer to my current apartment than my parents’ house seems to exceed my white noise threshold, though it’s nothing like being close to a highway. Sometimes my neighbors play music too loud (their front door and living room windows are maybe 20 feet from my bedroom window) and it keeps me awake, too.
posted by Erin on 8-24-2007 at 9:51 am
Crickets and those other little buzzy bugs.
posted by Lindsay D on 8-24-2007 at 10:08 am
Mine sounds like busy traffic, and drunk college guys talking trash at each other getting in fights. It is often peppered with the nice sound of firetrucks/ambulances when they have to go to the old folks home two doors down.
posted by Susan on 8-24-2007 at 10:09 am
I never realized how lucky I was living in the middle of nowhere (the only noise pollution I worry about is of the barnyard variety), but I recently spent a month living in Cambridge, with my bedroom window by a busy square. I had no AC, so the window was open at night to all the rumbling, honking and sirens. I’d love to live in the city, but the noise would take some adjusting to.
posted by scoobnut on 8-24-2007 at 10:25 am
I live just outside of San Diego in an older suburb called La Mesa. My house is close to a trolley station and I can hear a lot of noise coming from there if my windows are open. My neighbors dogs have a problem with barking and that gets annoying.
With the windows closed, my house is very quiet. My dog never barks and my other animals do not make noise. The most annoying noise maker in the house is my husband!
posted by Kelly on 8-24-2007 at 10:30 am
I just bought a house in a nice, quite street in Wake Forest (haven’t moved there yet). We choose not to purchase a much bigger, nicer house that was $10k less than the one we did end up buying specifically because it was close to a fairly busy street. I’ve had an apartment about 40 ft from elevated train tracks, and I don’t want anything like that again.
Why are we moving to NC from SI, NY? Because, among other things, the most prevalent sounds I hear are my townhouse neighbors screaming at each other all day long.
posted by Andrew on 8-24-2007 at 11:24 am
I live 1 block and a half from the airport. Everyone said we would get used to the schreeching jets at 1am, or the endless roar of plane engines on the runway as they prepare to take off.
I’m still waiting for it to become background noise. Currently it’s driving me batty.
posted by Jen on 8-24-2007 at 11:28 am
i live in what appears to be the average suburban community. we have the standard noises: children playing in the street, occasional dogs barking, birds chirping, etc. then there are all of the non-traditional suburban noises. my neighbor accross the street has 6 cars and seems to wash at least one every day then has to dry them with his leaf blower. my house is conviently situated in the middle of 3 quarrys so we often hear them blasting and on occasion feel the house shake. when we first moved in there was a race track 2 miles from our house and on race days it sounded like we were living inside a beehive.
inside the house often sounds like a circus. 4 dogs, 4 laptops, 4 adults, a screaming 4 year old and a TV that is always on (at full volume to try and combat the other noise in the house) all create so much noise and havoc that i often find myself looking for any excuse to get out of the house (i go for a lot of drives to no where just listening to the hum of the tires on the road). i seem to be the only one in the house that is bothered by the noise. sometimes i feel like all the noise scrambles my brain.
posted by itsabecky on 8-24-2007 at 11:29 am
Outside the apartment the noise is terrible! It’s right next to the highway and it’s a very busy complex. The funny thing is my boyfriend is Deaf so he doesn’t understand why I can’t sleep with the windows open at night (I grew up in the country). At least inside the house is better; closed captioning on all tv’s (volume down) and we communicate in ASL. Ahhh…peace and quiet!
posted by Beth on 8-24-2007 at 11:51 am
Between our current house and our former house we lived in an apartment for less than a year. The apartment was all wood construction, so I could hear everything in every apartment around us — footsteps, stereo, dishwasher, phone conversations, television.
I was almost driven to a nervous breakdown.
In my opinion, noise is particularly insidious because you cannot easily shut your ears. I have never found a comfortable ear plug.
It is also very expensive and difficult to sound-proof any area.
During this time I made a business trip to Amarillo, Texas. I visited Palo Duro Canyon and was brought to tears. It was so quiet.
posted by Janix on 8-24-2007 at 11:55 am
I can hear the high school marching band and football stadium crowds and announcer. I am also only a few blocks from police, fire, and ambulance stations, so we get a lot of sirens. Other than that it’s usually quiet.
HOWEVER! For the last 5 weeks, there has been very noisy and extensive construction, sometimes beginning as early as 7:30 am, on both of my next-door-neighbors’ houses. In the first few weeks, there was a lot of jackhammering, but now it’s mostly just saws, hammers, and shouting construction workers who park their vans in front of the fire hydrant.
posted by Jane on 8-24-2007 at 12:18 pm
My first 5 years were spent in a crummy little house right next to a fairly busy street and a railroad track. After my family moved to the country, the noise (or rather lack thereof)drove me nuts–nothing, punctuated by a few crickets or frogs.
Now I live in a fairly quiet apartment complex, and I run the fan for white noise. I do have a small puppy who yaps once in a while and wakes me up.
I think I have a preference for any noise, as long as it’s steeady, over no noise or noise punctuated by sudden sounds of any sort. But I think that makes sense.
Oh, and I’m also a fan of having the TV on in the background–i rarely watch or even listen to it, but it’s usually on if I’m home. I don’t think I have the attention span to watch even a half hour program.
posted by leiarenee on 8-24-2007 at 12:25 pm
Last year my dorm room looked out on a highway that was under construction.
I normally wouldn’t mind the highway noise, but for the first few weeks I was there they were tearing up the highway all through the night. And there was no muffling the noise because we didn’t have air conditioning so we couldn’t close the windows.
I didn’t sleep a whole lot while that was going on…
posted by Kaitie on 8-24-2007 at 1:16 pm
Aside from the occasional blasting of Reggaeton on the weekends, my neighborhood is pretty quiet.
My NEIGHBORS on the other hand, are another story. I live in a duplex. The lady on the other side had 2 emotionally handicappped foster children that, up until a few weeks ago, screamed, slammed doors, threw dirt on our cars, and would put the same annoying hip-hop or pop song on repeat on the porch stereo, crank it up, then disappear for hours. On top of that she has a tiny dog that the kids put outside for hours and it spends those hours continuously barking. I didn’t think it was physically possible for a dog to bark for 5 hours straight without a rest.
Our shared wall must be bomb-proof. As long as everyone stays in the house we don’t hear a peep. Unfortunately the kids and animals spent most of their time on the back porch. Our sliding glass doors are nowhere close to soundproof. Its like the kids and dog are in my house.
Strangely enough its been quiet as hell over there lately. I’m not really sure what happened. I got so used to the noise that its a little odd now.
posted by Marta on 8-24-2007 at 1:37 pm
We live on the edge of downtown…one block north, and you find yourself among abandoned industrial structures and open fields, which should, in theory, lend itself to a certain quiet. Unfortunately, our neighborhood is in the middle of a construction boom, and the noise is ridiculous at all hours…oh yeah, I almost forgot about the train station across the steet.
posted by natlynn on 8-24-2007 at 1:58 pm
I don’t know. Maybe it was because I was young at the time, but I spent many months living in a Bachelor Officer’s Quarters right off the end of the runway in Guam. Every couple of hours a flight of A-3s would take off and the pictures would literally shake on the walls. After a couple of weeks, I didn’t even hear them, night or day.
posted by FlyNavy on 8-24-2007 at 8:55 pm
We live in the middle of Seattle – 3 blocks west of the Space Needle on 1st and Broad. Thankfully we are on the top (5th) floor of our building, so we don’t hear neighbors, but the rollercoaster song is slowly driving me mad.
“Rollercoaster…of love…Rollercoaster…ew, ew, ew” Over and over again – up to 8 times an hour in tourist season we hear that same damn song coming from the “Seattle Ducks” that stop at the streetlight just below our apartment. The Ducks are amphibious WWII vehicles that have been turned into tourist mobiles. In one of those, the slight hill down to the waterfront from our apartment feels a bit like…a rollercoaster, hence the song – EVERY time.
posted by RM on 8-24-2007 at 10:41 pm
I’ve always had a low tolerance for noise. My personal peeve is wind chimes; every female roommate I’ve had has insisted on putting a wind chime out so we could, I guess, groove out to the random chatter of three or four unvarying notes repeated endlessly. To my mind, that’s not music, or “ambience”; it’s NOISE, and it drives me to distraction.
Oddly enough, I live near a train crossing now, and it doesn’t bother me a bit; as Paul Simon said, “everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance.” True enough in my case, I guess.
posted by MadMolecule on 8-24-2007 at 11:07 pm
I hear only chirping crickets and a car every 5 minutes or so. In two years when the politicains are done widening the road about 100 yards away I won’t be able to hear myself think. I think I will just become a politician so that I won’t NEED to think.
posted by Tyson on 8-24-2007 at 11:10 pm
I grew up in a large family – I’m the second-youngest of six kids, and we had and endless array of pets (for about five years we had 12 indoor-only cats and two dogs). There were about three TVs in the house (always on) and several radios turned to different stations.
I think I’m neither completely desensitized nor particularly sensitive to sound. I live in a second floor apartment downtown in a metropolitan area of about 1 million. The noice level here is very tolerable, just cars and the occasional argument from the apartments across the street, and some occasional heavy bass from the music next door. I pretty much don’t notice it unless I stop and think about it.
One thing I do notice, though, it silence. If I am home and there is seemingly no noise, I begin to feel nervous. My heart pounds when I finally do hear a noise. I think for me the sounds I hear mean the presence of people – people who would hear me if I were to scream, people who are going through their lives in close harmony with mine, even though we only say hello. I guess silence means no people to me, which is unnerving for me. I guess I’m an urbanite down to the core.
posted by bethym_a on 8-24-2007 at 11:11 pm
I live near a main street in a large city in India (where car horn = brakes and there are always people coming and going), along one of the flight paths of the international airport. I 100% believe that the constant noise has taken years off my life, and has made me jumpier and much less tolerant of, well, everything.
On the other hand, everywhere else will seem quiet, so I guess there’s that…
posted by taylor on 8-25-2007 at 4:07 am
On my fairly quiet street, I hear crickets, cicadas, and frogs at night. I can tell when the mail truck is four stops away, and I hear the sanitation truck far away enough to put the garbage out!
posted by Miss Cellania on 8-25-2007 at 4:49 am
Just last night I was watching an episode of ‘The New Twilight Zone’ (from the ’80s) in which this woman felt besieged by noise, mostly the nagging voices of her family. She found some amulet with which she could make the entire world come to a dead stop.
In the end she used it to stop, in mid flight, a nuclear missile the bad old russkies had sent. Of course, the rest of the world stopped as well and she was walking in the peace and quiet of suspended doom.
Fun!
posted by Bassman on 8-25-2007 at 8:35 am
I live in south Philly near a pair of world famous cheese steak places. The traffic is awful. Motorcycles and people who don’t know how to coast from stop sign to stop sign. Their brakes screech in the rain.
For a while we had a unmated male mockingbird outside our window. For those of you who don’t know, unmated males sing from about 12am to 4 or 5am in hopes of attracting an insomniac female. Luckily I’m swing shift so I don’t go to bed until about 3.
Oddly enough, it doesn’t bother me that much. The only thing that got me was there was a dog that would howl along with any siren it could hear, and that was often.
posted by Carla Hopkins on 8-25-2007 at 8:18 pm
I live in Salt Lake, which is basically shaped like a very large bowl. The trains can be heard from miles away, especially at 2 or 3 a.m. when there isn’t a lot of other noise to interfere. I never knew cities could have “good acoustics”, but I guess they do and mine would fall into the “bad” column . . . unless you really like train whistles. We also live right next to a trauma 1 hospital, so we have a lot of LifeFlight helicopters flying in all the time. Thank goodness for the new hospital going in far, far away that will take the helicopter traffic!
posted by Larissa on 8-27-2007 at 4:52 pm
I live in semi rural New Zealand.
We are currently suffering under the onslaught of frost fans. I know it sounds weird, but huge fans blast warm air across vineyards to maximise wine production during the Spring and Autumn.
While this pales into comparison with some of the stories posted here, it wouldn’t bee so bad if the local regulatory authority didn’t seem intent on promoting more of the damn things at the expense of residents health. That appears to be a common theme. Recognising that there is a problem and not having the appropriate people do something about it.
Sad.
posted by J Frost on 8-30-2008 at 4:46 am
Years ago, I use to catch the bus on this one particular street for express buses. I really hated it
because you would smell the diesel fumes + hear the carillon bells from a nearby church, so much that it would really grate on my nerves.
posted by kat621 on 1-6-2009 at 1:12 pm
My neighborhood sounds like screaming kids, barking dogs and traffic but only until I pop off a few shots with my rifle. Then it gets REALLY quiet except for the sirens and the obnoxious guy with a bull horn.
posted by Scott-O on 1-6-2009 at 3:11 pm
For two years I lived in the little residential triangle between a nature reserve, a Marine base, and the Secret Service training ground. The noise wasn’t very loud, but could come at any time of day, week, or year. Some days would be perfectly quiet, but at times it sounded like living in France in 1944. Car tires screeched, artillery boomed, and automatic weapons fired almost constantly.
posted by colby on 1-6-2009 at 5:28 pm
I live, for the first time, in a quite place. Too quiet. I can hear the blood slooshing around in my head when I’m home alone. I miss street noise. The house I’m in used to be 1/2 a block from the airport so they made the walls super thick and the windows soundproof. They moved the airport, and now you can probably do sound recordings in my livingroom.
posted by Nicole on 1-6-2009 at 7:43 pm
I live .4 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. On the best days we hear the waves from the yard. Sorry…
posted by PT on 1-7-2009 at 3:26 pm
For the first time in my life, I live “in” the city (Wellington, NZ). Most of the time, we just hear chirping birds, and the odd buzzing of crickets and cicadas.
On the weekends, though, or school holidays, many houses around us have really loud parties. Good thing we have ‘noise control’ officers, who can be called at any time of the day. We thought we had to wait until after a certain time at night, but apparently Wellington is really concerned with noise and making sure citizens aren’t stressed out by it.
Oddly enough, the only exception to the noise ordinance is firecrackers. Anyone over 18 can buy them in the week before Guy Fawkes, but can set them off any time of the year.
posted by Dawn on 2-4-2009 at 7:20 pm