Pollution is the presence of harmful chemical, physical, or biological
agents in air, water, food, or soil. Pollutants are harmful because they
adversely affect human health and well-being. They do so either because they are
present where they don’t belong or because they have reached a certain threshold
level at which they become toxic. Most pollutants are the result of human
activities.

Noise has been defined as unwanted sound. It is unwanted, not as a matter of
personal preference, but rather because, like other pollutants, it is
harmful. Noise adversely affects normal mental and physical functions leading to
disease. Ordinary individuals grasp the health implications of air pollution
due to cigarette smoke, the emissions of factories, or motor vehicles.
Most appreciate the problem of water pollution with heavy metals or bacteria.
However, many fail to recognize noise as a form of air pollution and the
inescapable costs to health and well-being that exposure to noise imposes. Noise
is a pollutant that enters the body via the ear. It ruins the soundscape
much as blight ruins the landscape, sewage or chemicals ruin drinking water, or
factory emissions and motor vehicle exhausts ruin the air. Like all
dose-dependent pollutants, it is potentially harmful, adversely affecting the health
and well-being of all those within earshot.
Environmental noise, which is largely unregulated, consists of all the
sounds in our communities except those sounds that originate in the workplace.
Environmental noise pollution is more severe and widespread than ever before,
and it will continue to increase in magnitude and severity because of
population growth, urbanization, and the associated growth in the use of increasingly
powerful, varied, and highly mobile sources of noise. It will also continue
to grow because of sustained growth in highway, rail, and air traffic, which
remain major sources of environmental noise. In the final analysis, it will
continue to grow until, as a society, we begin to put meaningful limits on
noise, the way we have done with other pollutants.
The potential health effects of noise pollution are numerous, pervasive, and
persistent. Moreover, they are medically, socially, and economically
significant. Noise pollution produces direct and cumulative adverse effects that
impair health and that degrade residential, social, working, and learning
environments. It causes economic losses and degrades one’s personal sense of
satisfaction and well-being. Noise pollution interferes with sleep,
concentration, learning, communication, and recreation. Ordinary citizens must learn to
recognize noise pollution, the same way they now recognize other forms of
pollution, such as urban smog or second-hand smoke. They must insist that
polluters stop polluting.