My body was vibrating. My ears were ringing. My brain was numb. My heart was pounding.

I know what you are thinking. Maybe I was ill or something but no I was not. This was me experiencing the after effects of a high noise environment. This experience motivated me to question our level of noise pollution throughout this country and even the world. It is a fact that the leading loss of hearing is from noise. Do you know that excessive noise can lead to a whole host of other serious health problems which include high blood pressure, stress related health conditions such as migraine, colitis, and ulcers.

Environmental noise pollution which is a form of air pollution continues to grow every day because of the major growth in our communities today. In the urban environments, boom cars, car horns, car alarms, and public transport systems may also be the cause. In urbanized and industrial towns it is observed that the noise level is also generated due to factories, small scale industries, and businesses

How does noise pollution cause hearing loss? Why is excessive noise too hazardous to our physical health? Do you know that noise is associated with increased aggression? The estimated cost of noise pollution is $30.8 billion a year and this is just in Europe. The World Health Organization Europe’s 2011 report, “Burden of disease from environmental noise,” analyzes the relationship between environmental noise and healthcare treatment, impaired learning and decreased productivity due to noise. At least 50% of teachers have damaged their voice from talking over classroom noise. A study of teachers published in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research in 2004, noted another side-effect of noise pollution in classrooms. Do you know that 3% of the cardiac arrests cases in Germany have been explicitly linked to traffic noise? This alarming fact was found in a 2009 press release from the Environmental Protection UK.

This video illustrates noise pollution along the bus route area.