Comments on: The not-silent killer: noise pollution

By: Bill

Bill — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:59:04 +0000

Can I switch with the guy who can’t stand quiet?
I hate it when the lady next door goes away and leaves her spoiled twenty-somethings alone for the weekend. Tonight they inflated a jump house and take turns jumping around like infants. At 12:30am I turned on the light out back and heard \Oh, wer’re having a GOOD TIME TONight- we’re having a Good time…\ They’re high as a kite. I put my earplugs aback in…

By: Dawn

Dawn — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:20:00 +0000

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.

By: PT

PT — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:26:00 +0000

I live .4 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. On the best days we hear the waves from the yard. Sorry…

By: Nicole

Nicole — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:43:00 +0000

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.

By: colby

colby — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:28:00 +0000

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.

By: Scott-O

Scott-O — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:11:00 +0000

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.

By: kat621

kat621 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:12:00 +0000

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.

By: J Frost

J Frost — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 09:46:45 +0000

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.

By: Larissa

Larissa — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:52:12 +0000

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!

By: Carla Hopkins

Carla Hopkins — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 02:18:19 +0000

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.