Noisy Bangkok

The title of this site is Quiet Bangkok. In fact the subject it treats of is Noisy Bangkok. Or rather Noisy ---------, the blank is almost any city you care to mention: Noisy Manila, Noisy Jakarta, Noisy Ho Chi Min City to mention only cities most comparable to Bangkok. To generalize, the subject is Urban Noise.

Urban noise: Noise emitted from various sources in an urban environment

“Our urban environment is crowded, busy-and noisy! Jackhammers pounding, sirens whining, alarms ringing, subway trains screeching, aircraft zooming overhead, car horns honking - these are but a few of the annoying and potentially hazardous sounds to which city dwellers are almost constantly exposed to.”

“Urban dwellers are besieged by noise, not only in the city’s streets, but also in its busy workplaces and many noisy leisure activities. Tests conducted in the city of Toronto by The Canadian Hearing Society in co-operation with The Toronto Star newspaper suggest that anyone working or living in the city is continually subjected to noise loud enough to be annoying and likely to cause long-term, irreversible hearing loss. A Star reporter and CHS audiologist used a hand-held noise meter and wore computerized noise meters which registered all the sounds that they encountered during two days: the average sound level was almost 77 decibels. They also found sound levels of 100 decibels near construction equipment or when trucks drove by; 81 decibels in a downtown clothing store, the equivalent noisy traffic; 89 decibels in a downtown pub; 97 decibels from car horns. The World Health Organization proposes that "there is no identifiable risk of hearing damage in noise levels of less than 75 decibels" (for an exposure of 8 hours), but "for higher levels, there is an increasing predictable risk." “

Urban sprawl results in more traffic; the year 2010 is expected to have an increase of traffic of 40% above 1990 levels, limited only by traffic saturation such as can be experienced on Bangkok streets any evening of the week. Modifications to the noise levels emitted by cars are expected to take up to 15 years to show an effect.

The Bozzetto noise cartoon referred to in the following post has a tragic outcome. The cause is not the individual noise sources which drive the cartoon characters to frenzy but rather the background noise symbolized by airplanes of which they are no longer even aware.


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