Effects on Humans
Direct Effects:
The most direct and obvious effect of noise is to our ears. Loud sounds can cause physical damage to the ear, resulting in:
Secondary Effects
The most direct and obvious effect of noise is to our ears. Loud sounds can cause physical damage to the ear, resulting in:
- Hearing Loss
- Painfully over-sensitive hearing (hyperacusis)
- Increased blood pressure (hypertension)
- Increased heart rate and breathing rate
- Digestive disturbances
Secondary Effects
- If noise prevents you from sleeping, that introduces a host of other problems that are associated with sleep loss, such as reduced concentration and a weakened immune system.
- If kids are trying to learn in a noisy environment, their ability to focus and concentrate is reduced, which can naturally lead to long-term learning problems.
- Noise can cause irritability and other mood changes, in some cases it can even contribute to an increase in aggressive behavior.
- A few people find noise so intolerable that they go to extreme lengths to avoid it, staying home as much as possible and effectively becoming social hermits. This can make them become anti-social which can lead to depression and most likely death.
- Another is Stress. Dealing with any of these things along with your own family, school, personal, or work life can pile on pressure and stress.
- Noise-exposed children in general have difficulties in concentrating in comparison with children from quieter schools. They have been found to have poorer auditory discrimination and speech perception as well as poorer memory requiring high processing demands. Finally, exposed children tend to have poorer reading ability and school performance on national standardized tests.
- Children exposed to chronic aircraft noise were less likely to solve a difficult puzzle involving a success or failure experience and were more likely to give up.
Effects on Animals and Plants
Facing an ever-increasing din of background noise from traffic and other human activities, many animals are adapting by changing their behavior or just moving to quieter locales. In turn, noise pollution is altering the landscape of plants and trees, which depend on noise-affected animals to pollinate them and spread their seeds. Some plants do worse in noisy areas, a study found, while others seem to do better, depending on how the community of creatures around them changes. Either way, the ripple effects can be far reaching and long lasting, especially for trees, which often take decades to grow from seedlings into adults.