Noise pollution

In 1949, buses in Washington DC installed a system to play radio programs (mostly music) in their buses and streetcars—conveyances owned by The Capital Transit System, a privately-owned public utility. At least two riders, Franklin Pollak and Guy Martin, were seriously annoyed by this turn of events—so annoyed, in fact, that the Public Utility Commission of the District of Columbia were forced to hold a number of hearings, in which they concluded that “the playing of radio programming was not inconsistent with public convenience, comfort and safety.”

Pollak and Martin appealed the decision, and the case ended up in the Supreme Court, which  concluded that the radio programs did not violate the First Amendment’s protection of Freedom of Speech (programs didn’t include objectionable propaganda) and also did not violate the Fifth Amendment (people in public transit were not guaranteed a right of privacy equivalent to that in a person's own home or vehicle). Justice Frankfurter chose not to participate in the case because he felt he couldn’t be objective: he believed himself to be a victim of music in the transit system. Justice Douglas dissented, arguing that playing music to a captive audience was contrary to the concept of liberty under the First Amendment and contrary to privacy under the Fifth Amendment.

You go justices Frankfurter and Douglas! I’m with you! Why must I be subjected to someone else’s choice of music everywhere I go? We can’t escape it. Where’s the liberty in that?

OK. It’s a pet peeve of mine. But noise pollution has serious effects on people: hearing impairment, tinnitus, hypertension, heart disease, changes in the immune system (most of these are stress related). Apparently, our sympathetic nervous systems are adversely affected by chronic noise. Someone has come up with the statistic that there are 10,000 deaths per year as a result of noise in the European Union.

Noise pollution is also a serious problem for animals. Example: researchers who were studying stress levels in whales, noticed that their stress levels dropped in mid-September 2001. The reason? A temporary pause in ocean shipping that followed 9/11.

Don’t even get me started on noisy restaurants.

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