How Noise Could Take Years Off Your Life

We’ve all been annoyed by the stomping of our upstairs neighbors, a blaring ambulance that rouses us from sleep, a dog barking while we’re on a Zoom call.

But could these quotidian sounds ever cross over from merely irritating to actually dangerous?

My colleagues have just published a fascinating project exploring how unpleasant noise can take years off your life, a largely unrecognized health threat that’s increasing the risk of hypertension, stroke and heart attacks for Americans.

When we hear the whooshing din of a freeway or the thundering of a low-flying plane, the sound alerts the stress detection center in our brain, which then sets off a cascade of reactions in our body that, over time, can take a serious toll on our health.

While we think we get used to these ambient noises after a while, the data actually shows the opposite: Repeated exposure makes people more sensitive to noise, lowering our tolerance for unpleasant sounds and essentially making the bad effects worse.

“Noise is worth worrying about,” Emily Baumgaertner, who led the reporting, told me. “The relationship between noise and health looks fairly linear on a plot. The louder your environment is, the higher your risk of heart disease, heart attack and even heart-related death.”

Noise levels are measured in decibels, and according to the World Health Organization, average road-traffic noise above 53 decibels, or average aircraft noise above about 45 decibels, is associated with adverse health effects. Roughly one-third of the U.S. population lives in areas with average noise levels at least that high.

It isn’t just a big-city problem. Emily and a group of our colleagues traveled to neighborhoods in rural Mississippi and suburban areas in California and New Jersey, as well as New York City, to measure noise exposure. The constant noise in, say, an apartment next to a highway may seem like more of a problem, but scientists suspect that jarring sounds that interrupt typically quieter environments may actually be more detrimental to our health.

Emily, who is based in Los Angeles, told me about visiting Point Loma in San Diego, where jets roar overhead about 280 times a day. At a high school less than a mile from the San Diego International Airport, noisy interruptions are so baked into daily life that students have their own term for when aircraft noise gets so loud that it stops classroom discussion: the Point Loma Pause.

Emily recalled standing in the kitchen of a home in nearby Bankers Hill as a plane flew over and thinking she could feel the blare in her bones.

“My ears were fine,” she said. “It was the way the long, steady waveform of engine noise traveled, permeating windows and walls as if they weren’t even there. That’s what helped bring home the systemic cardiovascular threats of low-frequency noise. You can seal up your house, but you’re never really going to escape it.”

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Where we’re traveling

Today’s tip comes from Barrie Moore, who lives in Redwood City, on the San Francisco Peninsula:

“One of my favorite places to visit is Edgewood Park and Natural Preserve in Redwood City. Edgewood is known for its extraordinary biodiversity and dozens of wildflower species that bloom each spring. April is usually the best month to see the most flowers. There are several different hiking trails that wind through oak woodlands, serpentine grasslands and chaparral habitats.

As you climb the gentle hills, you are rewarded with panoramic views of San Francisco Bay to the east and the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west. There is also a cute nature center — open on the weekends — a native plant garden and a large picnic area. Edgewood is a little jewel just minutes from the heart of Silicon Valley!”

Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to [email protected]. We’ll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.

Tell us

We’re almost halfway through 2023! What are the best things that have happened to you so far this year? What have been your wins? Or your unexpected joys, big or small?

Tell me at [email protected]. Please include your full name and the city where you live.

And before you go, some good news

Kairan Quazi was always ahead.

When he was 2, he spoke in complete sentences. When he was in kindergarten, he regaled classmates with stories he had heard on NPR. He started attending community college when he was 9.

Kairan, who lives in Pleasanton, is expected to graduate from the Santa Clara University School of Engineering this month — and he’s only 14. He already has a job lined up as a software engineer at SpaceX, The Los Angeles Times reports.