Dur­ing the last 20 years, there has been in­creas­ing con­cern about the qual­i­ty of noise as a pol­lu­tant. As noise lev­els have risen, its ef­fects have be­come per­va­sive and more ap­par­ent.

An­thro­pol­o­gists be­lieve that hu­mans evolved in rel­a­tive­ly silent spaces and are adapt­ed to si­lence. Our sounds came from na­ture. Loud nois­es sig­nalled trou­ble, a preda­tor’s roar, an en­e­my’s howl, the thun­der of a com­ing storm or the crash of a rock­slide. We evolved to as­so­ciate loud nois­es with dan­ger, which is why we re­act ad­verse­ly to un­ex­pect­ed nois­es.

Our bod­ies re­spond by re­leas­ing stress hor­mones, adren­a­line and cor­ti­sol, that en­able us to re­act in­stant­ly, in­stinc­tive­ly, with­out think­ing, pre­pared to fight or run. These dos­es of hor­mones used to be in­fre­quent and life­sav­ing.

We have the same re­ac­tions to­day, loud noise equals stress, equals fight or flight, but the noise stim­uli are no longer in­ter­mit­tent, once or twice a week, they are now al­most con­stant. Traf­fic, trucks, car horns. Am­bu­lance sirens, a con­stant in town now. Tied up dogs! Cer­tain types of mu­sic. The ir­ri­tat­ing back­ground hum of ACs. What pass­es for or­di­nary con­ver­sa­tion. We are con­stant­ly walk­ing around with high lev­els of stress hor­mones. Liv­ing like that in­creas­es our risks of cer­tain dis­eases, pre­vents learn­ing and de­creas­es pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Noise, like heat and air pol­lu­tion, is one of the bi­o­log­i­cal stres­sors, pol­lu­tants, as­so­ci­at­ed with every­day life. Noise is de­fined as “un­want­ed sound.” It an­noys, awak­ens, angers and frus­trates peo­ple. It dis­rupts com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in­di­vid­ual thoughts, and af­fects per­for­mance ca­pa­bil­i­ty. Dif­fer­ent forms of pol­lu­tion com­bine to de­tract from the qual­i­ty of life.

T&T, orig­i­nal­ly a qui­et is­land in the Caribbean, has be­come noisy. Any­one, ex­cept the hear­ing im­paired, would agree with this. In fact, it’s been sug­gest­ed that this is the prob­lem: a sub­stan­tial mi­nor­i­ty of Trinida­di­ans have some de­gree of hear­ing loss. They need loud­er and loud­er sounds to hear. We now live sur­round­ed by noise all our lives, from be­fore we are born, in­side the womb, to our last dy­ing gasp, we are im­mersed in a callal­loo of sounds, which make us ir­ri­ta­ble and an­gry, raise our blood pres­sure and dam­age our hear­ing.

We are a high-risk so­ci­ety for hear­ing loss. We know Trinida­di­ans who have lost hear­ing be­cause of “bussing bam­boo;” play­ing in steel­bands; work­ing in fac­to­ries and at Pi­ar­co with­out pro­tect­ing their hear­ing. Every Car­ni­val we see mas­quer­aders who have tem­porar­i­ly lost some hear­ing be­cause of the sound com­ing from the big trucks. No one knows what the repet­i­tive ef­fect of mul­ti­ple Car­ni­val dam­age on hear­ing will be, but one can make an ed­u­cat­ed guess.

Who knows what the re­cent out­break of fire­works has done to our hear­ing? Judg­ing from the num­ber of let­ters to the ed­i­tor and the re­sponse from the po­lice, it has al­ready made a num­ber of peo­ple aware of the rather se­ri­ous “phys­i­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems” as­so­ci­at­ed with noise.

A new­born ba­by can be born with its hear­ing dam­aged be­cause the moth­er ex­posed her fe­tus to ex­trem­ly loud sounds. The most com­mon ex­am­ple? Go to any fete and stand up with­in ten feet of one of those boom-box­es. Too much of what pass­es for mu­sic to­day used to be con­sid­ered noise. Chil­dren es­pe­cial­ly are sub­ject­ed to a ter­rif­ic vol­ume of mu­sic in their homes, at school, in the street, nev­er mind the “mo­bile dis­cos” or maxi-taxis.

Noise has be­come worse with­in the last ten years. Go to the beach. To a foot­ball match. To a re­li­gious cer­e­mo­ny. Lis­ten to the ra­dio pro­grammes, the an­nounc­ers re­peat­ed­ly have to ask callers to turn down the vol­ume of the ra­dios in­side their homes or cars. Just walk down the street. It’s im­pos­si­ble to get away from it.

The prob­lem is, you grow up in noise, you like noise. It feels good, com­fort­ing. It be­comes your “cul­ture.” You can hide in noise, be­come part of the crowd, makes you feel, if on­ly un­til the rum hits your head, that you be­long, are loved. All ah we is one!

So, most of us no longer con­scious­ly both­er with noise. Our bod­ies do though. And re­act. Anx­i­ety lev­els are up. So are blood pres­sures. The heart, the brain, the ears, the stom­ach … all sys­tems are af­fect­ed, every sys­tem re­al­ly. It will be a long, hard strug­gle be­fore we come to terms with our noise lev­els.

Few will take this prob­lem on. We’ve be­come so used to liv­ing in a jail of noise that most of us find com­fort in con­stant blare. But si­lence is still worth seek­ing, even if it is un­com­fort­able at first.

Wis­dom says, “It is in si­lence that we come to terms with our in­ner sense, our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, our sense of what is right and wrong.”