Speaker 1: Hi, friends, It's Josh. For this week's Select I've chosen
Speaker 1: our October twenty twenty one episode a noise pollution, which
Speaker 1: is actually an overlooked hazard to our health and it's
Speaker 1: even been shown to cause death in some cases. Plus
Speaker 1: it guest stars the worst thing in the world, the
Speaker 1: gas powered leaf blower, and we get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of why they're so terrible. Plus there's plenty more amazing,
Speaker 1: action packed stuff, So kick back and enjoy this episode
Speaker 1: on noise pollution.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 1: there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 2: The Can I tell people what just happened?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 2: After going on fourteen.
Speaker 1: Years coming up? Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2: In April Jerry hit record and you went, Hey, everybody, Wait,
Speaker 2: I've been having a.
Speaker 1: Lot of trouble with my brain lately. I think I'm
Speaker 1: just Hey, I think you're doing great. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I told you. Thank you. I think you're doing
Speaker 1: great too. I don't know if I told you, But
Speaker 1: I had trouble remembering how to what six plus seven
Speaker 1: added together to? Did I tell you that the other day?
Speaker 2: That sounds familiar?
Speaker 1: That really bothered me. Man, Yeah, and that's like my
Speaker 1: favorite number, and it's like I just couldn't do it.
Speaker 2: I was putting my daughter to bed the other night
Speaker 2: and as she was going to sleep, literally falling asleep, daddy,
Speaker 2: what's four plus four?
Speaker 1: Eight?
Speaker 2: What's six plus two? It's also eight?
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: She's learning math, and you know that first stuff you
Speaker 2: learn is literally just that simple addition. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: just funny to think about, like, wow, that's what's on
Speaker 2: her mind right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But also she's learning acceptance too. It's unquestioning.
Speaker 2: Can I tell people how you spelled this document that
Speaker 2: you sent my way for this noise pollution episode?
Speaker 1: Sure? Boy, you're just laying it all out there, aren't you.
Speaker 2: It was fun because it looked like a heavy metal band.
Speaker 2: It was n O I ze p O I think
Speaker 2: it was p O l l U s h U
Speaker 2: N Yeah, And looking at it on paper was like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: that's that's a good bad band.
Speaker 1: Yeah name it is like that's a that's a good
Speaker 1: name for a made up band in a movie.
Speaker 2: Like Wild stallions, Yes, Bill and Ted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, although that's tough to compete with, you know it is.
Speaker 1: I also think we should, uh, we should give a
Speaker 1: little CoA here. I think it's one impossible for you
Speaker 1: and I not to turn into old men complaining about
Speaker 1: like loud music and loud mufflers and stuff in this episode.
Speaker 1: So it's gonna happen. I think everybody who knows us
Speaker 1: and saw the title this one knew it was gonna happen.
Speaker 1: But let's just put it on the table now.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's also funny you mentioned this because I
Speaker 2: did mention noise pollution. I introduced that concept to my
Speaker 2: daughter the other day and said, you know. She was like, well,
Speaker 2: what's that And I said, well, it's as bad as
Speaker 2: trash on the road, but it's noise that's doing it
Speaker 2: and you should be aware of it. And she was like,
Speaker 2: oh okay. And I guess it never occurred to me
Speaker 2: that like loud noises for kids, unless it's something that
Speaker 2: really bothers them, is just part of life.
Speaker 1: Sure, it definitely seems to become more bothersome the older
Speaker 1: you get.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I think I don't know why, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: hypothesize that it's because you grow to learn that it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be that way, and you come to
Speaker 1: really resent the things and the people who are making
Speaker 1: it so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's why people One reason people
Speaker 2: retire to the country or something like that, if they've
Speaker 2: lived in the city their whole life. M h. Just
Speaker 2: a little more tranquil, perhaps even bucolic lifestyle. Yeah, quieter,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of science behind it. It's not
Speaker 2: just like, oh, I don't want to hear those noises,
Speaker 2: as you will see throughout this episode, it is it's bad.
Speaker 1: For your health. Hey, speaking of retirement, have you seen
Speaker 1: that documentary on the villages I have? It is bonkers?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw it actually when I had COVID, I
Speaker 2: went on a documentary binge and that was one of them.
Speaker 1: Man, it was like one of the most disturbing documentaries
Speaker 1: I've ever seen, and I've seen like Dear Zachary, and
Speaker 1: somehow it was like up there with it.
Speaker 2: It was good man that I mean, I don't want
Speaker 2: to give anything, but the one guy that was you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of discos too. Sure, Yeah, that was It's
Speaker 2: kind of funny at first, but then that got really sad. Too, Yes,
Speaker 2: a lot of layers.
Speaker 1: And all of it was incredibly sad.
Speaker 2: I was highly recommended.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just bizarre man. And then I was watching the
Speaker 1: credits and I saw Darren Aronofsky was an executive producer.
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, nothing suddenly clicked a little more.
Speaker 2: I thought a great idea for a movie would be
Speaker 2: a setting like that. You couldn't call it that because
Speaker 2: it's sure proprietary, but the town set it. Yeah, a
Speaker 2: setting just like that where they wake up one day
Speaker 2: and there's been a murder and then, like you know,
Speaker 2: Kyle McLaughlin, it's kind of a twin peaksy thing, you know,
Speaker 2: the stranger from a strange land comes in to investigate
Speaker 2: a murder in a very unlikely place and all the
Speaker 2: sort of weirdos there. I think that would be a
Speaker 2: cool movie, yeah, or TV show.
Speaker 1: Sure, well, I mean that is twin Peaks basically, right.
Speaker 2: But you could if you said it in a retirement
Speaker 2: community in Florida, people wouldn't recognize.
Speaker 1: You could just walk away, dust in your hands off,
Speaker 1: like job well done.
Speaker 2: There's plenty of things that have done that.
Speaker 1: It's not just twin Peaks, sure, I know, just nobody
Speaker 1: did it better than twin peaks, I think.
Speaker 2: Agreed, all right, So noise pollution. I think the fact
Speaker 2: of the podcast to me came right up front in
Speaker 2: that I never thought of the fact that a decibel
Speaker 2: was a tenth of a bull or a bell.
Speaker 1: Which his name is DESI right there. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I never thought of it either, because you never hear
Speaker 1: of any other variation, and it's like one decibel, ten decibels,
Speaker 1: one hundred decibels, you know, and apparently a bowl or
Speaker 1: a bell b e l is named after Alexander Graham
Speaker 1: Bell too.
Speaker 2: Didn't know that either.
Speaker 1: And the reason why we why a decibel is used,
Speaker 1: which is one tenth of a bell, is because a decibel,
Speaker 1: a one tenth of a bell difference in sound is
Speaker 1: the lowest, the smallest difference that humans can detect, right,
Speaker 1: So we trade in decibels here on the level.
Speaker 2: And we trade in an algorithm when we talk decibels,
Speaker 2: because it's one of those weird things where it's not
Speaker 2: like one hundred decibels, is it twice as loud as
Speaker 2: fifty decibels, it's spit into an equation that's actually one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand times as loud.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So like ten decibels. The difference between ten decibels
Speaker 1: and twenty decibels is twenty decibels is ten times louder.
Speaker 1: The difference between ten decibels and thirty decibels thirty decibels
Speaker 1: is one hundred times louder.
Speaker 2: It's long riz right, and zero dbs as we'll call them.
Speaker 2: That is the threshold of human hearing period, and one
Speaker 2: hundred and forty decibels is about where you can start
Speaker 2: to experience literal physical pain from a sound.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw between one hundred and twenty and one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it ranges like I mean, I've been to some
Speaker 2: loud concerts and small venues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dinosaur Junior at Variety Theater was it for me.
Speaker 2: I was just about to say, Dinosaur Junior. They're one
Speaker 2: of the legendary loud bands.
Speaker 1: It was insane.
Speaker 2: It is super loud. But it's not like I don't
Speaker 2: remember feeling pain, but I do remember feeling discomforted. A
Speaker 2: couple of these where I was like, jeezu, this is like,
Speaker 2: I like my music loud, but this is a little.
Speaker 1: Much, dude. Yeah, Like I don't wear earplugs. I wore
Speaker 1: earplugs in that, and I was like, I'm saving myself
Speaker 1: right now. It was so loud, and I meant to
Speaker 1: say Variety Playhouse, not Variety Theater.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we played there before. We don't want to disrespect. No,
Speaker 2: I know, you know they've but all of this to say,
Speaker 2: God bless j Mascus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's great, but it was really loud.
Speaker 2: What about this conversation that we're having. What is that?
Speaker 1: Well, it depends a normal conversation something around sixty decibels.
Speaker 1: And I saw that. That's people standing about a meter
Speaker 1: apart speaking without raising their voices. That's sixty decibels right there.
Speaker 1: For a reference.
Speaker 2: What about a car?
Speaker 1: Cars are about ten times louder to ten hundred to
Speaker 1: one thousand times louder than normal conversation, depending on the
Speaker 1: car of the truck, between seventy and ninety decibels.
Speaker 2: What about an airplane or cat siren?
Speaker 1: So you would think, okay, a normal conversation is sixty decibels,
Speaker 1: an airplane being one hundred and twenty decibels is twice
Speaker 1: as loud. No, my friend, it's one hundred thousand. It's
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand times louder. An airplane is one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand times louder than a normal conversation if it reaches
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty decibels.
Speaker 2: All right, if you've ever been on a tarmac, like
Speaker 2: a live tarmac and herd a plane kind of landing
Speaker 2: or taking off, you that's just some loud stuff. Yes,
Speaker 2: And that's why they wear those cans on their ears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they and they definitely should because we're starting to
Speaker 1: realize that there's all sorts of hearing loss besides the
Speaker 1: traditional ones that you can pick up on a regular
Speaker 1: hearing test. There's something called hidden hearing loss that we're
Speaker 1: just starting to get our eyes or mind around where
Speaker 1: the structure of your hearing apparatus in your ear, the
Speaker 1: little cilia that's almost like a venus flytrap trigger hair,
Speaker 1: but for sound instead, like those things can be intact,
Speaker 1: but the neurons that form the chain between your ear
Speaker 1: and your brain can be permanently damaged, so that the
Speaker 1: sound that gets to your brain is garbled or are
Speaker 1: partially missing. And that's a huge thing that can happen
Speaker 1: at much lower intensity than we understood before. And speaking
Speaker 1: of intensity, I think we should say real quick a
Speaker 1: decibel to us humans we basically talk in decibels as
Speaker 1: like a measure of volume, because that's what it appears
Speaker 1: to like us, like an increase in decibels is an
Speaker 1: increase in the volume of the sound. But really what
Speaker 1: a decibel is measuring is the intensity of the disturbance
Speaker 1: of an air of the air that something has made.
Speaker 1: So if you're really close to that disturbance, it's going
Speaker 1: to be a very intense exposure to your ear. If
Speaker 1: you're further away, it's going to be a much less
Speaker 1: intense intense exposure because it kind of dissipates over distances.
Speaker 1: But to you, it's just registering is a difference in volume,
Speaker 1: where really it's a difference in the intensity of the
Speaker 1: wave that's being produced that's traveling through the air.
Speaker 2: That's right, And uh, this is all sound, Yes, that's
Speaker 2: not noise. Noise is different. Noise is what we're talking
Speaker 2: about mainly, and noise is classified as unwanted sound and.
Speaker 1: That simple enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that can vary depending on who you are. Obviously,
Speaker 2: you know, the sound of your significant other's voice after
Speaker 2: forty years may be noise to you asking for some tea.
Speaker 2: The sound of a Harley Davidson motorcycle being rebbed up
Speaker 2: in front of your house might be noise. Or those
Speaker 2: those blowers that used to hate and how they give
Speaker 2: you love and use.
Speaker 1: I still don't love it, and I went battery powered,
Speaker 1: but it's still even while I'm using, I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: a terrible person.
Speaker 2: But you get it done quickly, probably right, so quick.
Speaker 1: So quick. I'm like mincing and prancing, just getting a ton.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of kinds of different noise sometimes,
Speaker 2: Like let's say you work in a in a machine
Speaker 2: shop or something and you use a machine, Like the
Speaker 2: sound the machine makes is like it's not necessary, but
Speaker 2: it's a byproduct. It's a result of the machine working correctly.
Speaker 2: It's not like, well, let's just make this thing loud.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, I'm sorry, a jackammer is going to
Speaker 2: be loud because that's just the way it goes. You
Speaker 2: can our jackammer episode is fantastic. So that sound isn't
Speaker 2: necessarily noise, but the intensity and repetition of that sound
Speaker 2: makes it becomes noise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's an unwanted intensity, or it can just
Speaker 1: the sound existing itself, like you're saying, like a leaf
Speaker 1: blower just an unwanted existence of sound. So either way,
Speaker 1: the operative thing is it's unwanted sound. That's the key, right, Yeah, And.
Speaker 2: This is another cool fact of the episode, I think,
Speaker 2: is that they think that as late as through the
Speaker 2: nineteen forties and into nineteen fifty, natural sounds were still
Speaker 2: the dominant sounds that you heard, and then things really changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's a there's a big qualifier that a
Speaker 1: lot of researchers make that and not everybody does, But
Speaker 1: that noise is by definition human caused, right, like either
Speaker 1: we're yelling or whatever, or one of the machines that
Speaker 1: we've created is making noise. But that you wouldn't say,
Speaker 1: like the sound of that waterfall is noise, Like we
Speaker 1: don't think of like natural sounds typically as noise. It's
Speaker 1: just sounds. And as we'll see, it's probably because we
Speaker 1: have been living, like our species has been living around
Speaker 1: those sounds and has definitively excluded them as threatening, so
Speaker 1: that they're they don't they don't produce like an irritation
Speaker 1: in us. They just are sound, almost regardless of how
Speaker 1: intense they.
Speaker 2: Are, right, And that and again that irritation is subjective
Speaker 2: because that rock concert that I enjoy. Someone else might
Speaker 2: call that noise that that Space Shuttle launch that is
Speaker 2: super loudud might be noise to some people, but to others,
Speaker 2: you know, it's the same sound, but they they don't
Speaker 2: think of it as noise because they're excited and exhilarated
Speaker 2: in the moment to see and hear that thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, you know, the other night, the inspiration for
Speaker 1: Crew came back on the Dragon capsule. Did you watch that?
Speaker 2: No? Did you see it live?
Speaker 1: We didn't see it because they splashed down in the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: but we heard the sonic boom it made when it
Speaker 1: came back into the atmosphere over Florida. It was a
Speaker 1: stounding that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Did you see that doasonic boom? No? I didn't.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's really good. It starts off like, oh god,
Speaker 1: this is not good. This is like a terrible corporate ad,
Speaker 1: and then it really starts to find its feet. It's
Speaker 1: crazy how it evolves over like just the first couple episodes.
Speaker 2: I gotta see it.
Speaker 1: It's good. It's definitely worth seeing.
Speaker 2: What other kinds of noise you got? Industrial noise, which
Speaker 2: that's classified as kind of from the beginning of the
Speaker 2: p process all the way to the end of any
Speaker 2: kind of industrial process, and that's basically called continuous noise
Speaker 2: from you know, raw materials all the way to the
Speaker 2: to the end disposal of whatever byproducts can usually cause
Speaker 2: a lot of racket.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So like you know, like like a generator humming
Speaker 1: or something like that, there's not a lot of variation
Speaker 1: and intensity. It's basically this hum or steam being released,
Speaker 1: or even like a rhythmic like a like something being
Speaker 1: like hammered, No, not hammered. That's a different that's called
Speaker 1: the impulsive noise, but just something that doesn't really vary.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of a monotonous sound. That's that's this
Speaker 1: kind of a subcategory called continuous sound. And it just
Speaker 1: so happens that most industrial processes are continuous in nature.
Speaker 2: Right, whereas a train going by your house, or a
Speaker 2: plane flying or a car going by or a siren
Speaker 2: is intermittent.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then also you could probably say, like if
Speaker 1: you held the trigger down on a backpack leaf blower,
Speaker 1: which again is the worst thing that anyone's ever invented,
Speaker 1: but if you held it down, that would be a
Speaker 1: continuous sound for the whole time it was going. But
Speaker 1: no one does that ever, they just rev in this
Speaker 1: arrhythmic pattern that your brain is just giving its all
Speaker 1: to try to try to find a pattern in. And
Speaker 1: so you get worn out and irritated so quickly because
Speaker 1: of those things, because they don't follow rhyme a reason.
Speaker 1: And in conjunction with that, it's an intermittent sound, which is,
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, one of the worst sounds
Speaker 1: for us.
Speaker 2: Right. And then you've also got community noise, which is
Speaker 2: just people noise. I think the leaf blowers are thrown
Speaker 2: into that lawnmowers, you know, if you got a festival
Speaker 2: in your neighborhood, or fireworks on the Fourth of July,
Speaker 2: or people playing their music in their cards or their houses.
Speaker 2: This is all just sort of people generated community sound.
Speaker 1: Yeap. So those are basically the three categories that I saw.
Speaker 1: Industrial trafficking, community.
Speaker 2: Should we take a break?
Speaker 1: I think we should.
Speaker 2: All right, We'll be right back. I gotta go quiet
Speaker 2: down that racket outside. I'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Okay, Do you finished shaking your fist at those teenagers
Speaker 1: on your lawn.
Speaker 2: I'm lucky because we don't have loud. We don't have
Speaker 2: one neighbor on one side, and our neighbor beside us
Speaker 2: is pretty quiet, but I do live near and I've
Speaker 2: talked about it before, a pretty main road and you
Speaker 2: kind of get used to it. But I also yearn
Speaker 2: you know, to be a few blocks in. But you know,
Speaker 2: you can't pick up your house and move it. So
Speaker 2: what are you gonna do? You get used to it.
Speaker 1: You can, but it's really expensive.
Speaker 2: Well, no, that is true. You can move a house sometimes.
Speaker 1: Didn't we do an episode on that once?
Speaker 2: How to Move a House?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think I don't know if we did one just
Speaker 2: on that. It may have been like historic districts or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: And by the way, that episode we couldn't think of
Speaker 2: the other day was crumple Zones.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, so we did do a whole episode on
Speaker 1: crumple zones.
Speaker 2: We did.
Speaker 1: Boy, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel there.
Speaker 1: But I remember that being an interesting episode though.
Speaker 2: It was totally interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well that's the stuff you should know, way, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Chunk it is? Indeed, should we talk about hearing damage?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, like I was saying, there's that kind of
Speaker 1: new type of hearing damage that we're wrapping our minds
Speaker 1: around that is like the death of the neurons that
Speaker 1: are supposed to transmit the electrical impulse to the brain,
Speaker 1: And so we don't hear very well. Our communication is garbled.
Speaker 1: And yet you can pass a traditional hearing test no problem.
Speaker 1: But other research is really starting to unfold like less
Speaker 1: predictable ways that noise and noise pollution actually affects our health.
Speaker 1: And it's like our entire system is negatively affected by
Speaker 1: noise and noise exposure.
Speaker 2: It is, and it basically at the beginning of the
Speaker 2: whole process is triggering the same exact thing that triggers
Speaker 2: your fight or flight response, Like you're gonna have the
Speaker 2: same reaction to you know, if you hear a siren
Speaker 2: go by, the same thing is happening in your as
Speaker 2: far as your brain knows. Then what happens if like
Speaker 2: a bear walks up to you and roars right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, like our hearing is always on and it's
Speaker 1: always on the lookout for a potential threat, And one
Speaker 1: of the ways that a potential threat can give itself
Speaker 1: away is by making a sound. Right. It was, like
Speaker 1: I was saying earlier, like we've been around waterfalls and
Speaker 1: the sound of waves in our evolutionary history for so
Speaker 1: long that basically it seems like when you're born, you
Speaker 1: come equipped with this. Don't worry about that sound. Actually
Speaker 1: you can be soothed by it. It's not something that
Speaker 1: should stimulate your fighter flight response. But we've lived around
Speaker 1: industrial machinery and the sound of a text message or
Speaker 1: a leaf blower, the stupid leaf blowers for such a
Speaker 1: little amount of our evolutionary history that our minds are
Speaker 1: not at all attuned to those things, or we haven't
Speaker 1: kind of adopted this idea that a leaf blower is
Speaker 1: non threatening and so it stimulates the fighter flight response
Speaker 1: and is when we hear it.
Speaker 2: That's right. So you're going to hear that sound you're amigdalah,
Speaker 2: which we've talked about plenty, contributes to emotional processing, is
Speaker 2: going to send that same distress signal to the hypothalamus.
Speaker 2: And again that gets if you are in a fight
Speaker 2: or flight response, which is why you probably want to
Speaker 2: run screaming if you hear too many sirens you're here
Speaker 2: too many leaf blowers, sure, and then that's going to
Speaker 2: signal your adrenal glands to get your adrenaline going. And
Speaker 2: I believe cortisol gets going as well. Yes, it's like
Speaker 2: literally mimicking fight or flight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so they figured out that like people who
Speaker 1: are continuously chronically exposed to sound, like say people who
Speaker 1: live like really close to an airport, are really close
Speaker 1: to the subway tracks, or people who work in a
Speaker 1: really noisy factory, they have all sorts of crazy random
Speaker 1: health problems, Like their kids sometimes have low birth weight. Obviously,
Speaker 1: they can develop tonitis, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, Their children
Speaker 1: who are exposed to chronic noise can have cognitive impairments,
Speaker 1: high blood pressure, like all sorts of crazy stuff. And
Speaker 1: so you think, well, okay, that's like, that's terrible anybody
Speaker 1: who has to live near noise or work near noise,
Speaker 1: like we should do something about that. But it's even
Speaker 1: worse than that, Like, noise pollution is even more in
Speaker 1: citia than that because you don't have to be chronically
Speaker 1: exposed to it. You don't have to live in a
Speaker 1: place where you're like, this is an objectively noisy place
Speaker 1: that I live or work in to still suffer from
Speaker 1: the effects of noise pollution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it can affect you when you're sleep because,
Speaker 2: like you said, your ears are always on. It's not
Speaker 2: like you go to sleep and the ear say, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to take a nice break. That would be
Speaker 2: a fantastic evolutionary adaptation. Actually, yeah, well actually it would
Speaker 2: be terrible.
Speaker 1: It would these days. It wouldn't be days. It would
Speaker 1: be great the Mountain, the Mountain, Lion Sabertooth Tiger days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'd be nice if there was a switch and
Speaker 2: you could kind of control that.
Speaker 1: Oh, it'd be so nice. I think the switch is
Speaker 1: the white noise wave machine. Is that switch?
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I've gotten addicted to such that I have
Speaker 2: to travel with them now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everywhere I go I've heard that. Yeah. Basically, once
Speaker 1: you start, you can't go back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like it, though, I do. Brown noise is
Speaker 2: my drug of choice.
Speaker 1: It sounds so gross, though brown.
Speaker 2: I make a brown noise every morning, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean?
Speaker 1: Wow, I was not expecting Dangerfield to make an appearance.
Speaker 2: Well that's what you meant, right, poop or no?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean I guess anytime I hear brown, I
Speaker 1: think it's poop.
Speaker 2: You know, you think of that or you think of
Speaker 2: ween the band.
Speaker 1: Did they have a brown song or album?
Speaker 2: They talk about the brown thing, the brown sound and
Speaker 2: brown is just sort of their color and how they
Speaker 2: used to talk about sound. And I've heard other groups
Speaker 2: talk about brown sounds.
Speaker 1: So what does brown sound sound like?
Speaker 2: Well, brown noise, you know if white noises, brown noises.
Speaker 1: Okays middle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's sort of a lower lower end. And if
Speaker 2: you actually play it through a speaker, like if you
Speaker 2: put it on your phone and play it through a
Speaker 2: little bluetooth, you can get some good bass and it
Speaker 2: just it really works wonders for me, I.
Speaker 1: Should try brown noise or even white noise. I've been
Speaker 1: using chrome noise where it's like and it's really not
Speaker 1: helping me sleep at all. You like?
Speaker 2: You like I have the sound of an early Internet
Speaker 2: connection being made of a constant. Did they ever name that?
Speaker 2: They should have named that be great.
Speaker 1: To Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just call it whatever it was.
Speaker 1: They called it the tickety wichet, right.
Speaker 2: Interrupted sleep though, that's that's the big problem, or one
Speaker 2: of the big problems, because your ears are always on.
Speaker 2: If you have interrupted sleep or poor sleep overall, you're
Speaker 2: gonna be tired. Obviously, your creativity, your memory can get impaired.
Speaker 2: Your creativity is gonna be low. You're gonna have impaired judgment,
Speaker 2: your psychomotor skills might be impacted. You might have more headaches.
Speaker 2: They've done studies. If you live near airports and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, or you know, next to like a rail yard,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have more headaches, you might take more sleeping
Speaker 2: pills as a result, you might be more prone to
Speaker 2: minor accidents, and you are going to be more prone
Speaker 2: to seek psychiatric treatment in your life. They like studies
Speaker 2: have shown this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a study of people living near European airports.
Speaker 1: They found a ten decibel increase in aircraft noise was
Speaker 1: associated with a twenty eight percent increase in anxiety medication,
Speaker 1: and that people were also likelier to have like twenty
Speaker 1: five percent more likely to have symptoms of depression. So again,
Speaker 1: all this is just from like having not good sleep,
Speaker 1: which is bad enough, but apparently Chuck it even gets
Speaker 1: worse because even if your sleep isn't disturbed where you're
Speaker 1: waking up and not getting sleep because.
Speaker 2: Of noise, right, like you get used to it sort of.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, the noise is still affecting you while you're
Speaker 1: sleeping because again, your ear never turns off. It's always
Speaker 1: on the listen out for some sort of threat creeping
Speaker 1: up on you. And so if you're exposed to noise
Speaker 1: while you're sleeping, it still has that stress effect on you.
Speaker 1: And what they've figured out is that one of the
Speaker 1: problems of just being chronically stressed through something like noise
Speaker 1: and I think stress in general, is that it affects
Speaker 1: I think it's called the end of thelium, which is
Speaker 1: the lining of your blood vessels, and they respond to
Speaker 1: chemicals that tell them to constrict to relax, and they
Speaker 1: get constricted when they get stressed, when they're exposed to stress,
Speaker 1: like cortisol or something like that comes along and says constrict.
Speaker 1: And when they do that, you get high blood pressure,
Speaker 1: you can end up with heart disease, you can end
Speaker 1: up suffering from heart attacks. And what's insane is they
Speaker 1: figured out that after one night of being exposed while
Speaker 1: you're sleeping to something like train sounds, your endothelium starts suffering,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't function as well after just one night
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 2: Right, Like, isn't the idea that you can have no
Speaker 2: other sort of poor health markers and it can actually
Speaker 2: be brought on because of this noise?
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, while you're sleeping you're still getting sleep, but
Speaker 1: it's still happening to you while you're sleeping. And not
Speaker 1: only like high blood pressure or like a heart attack
Speaker 1: or something like that coming down the road, but also
Speaker 1: like diabetes, obesity. There's a lot of things that we're
Speaker 1: figuring out are tied to the lining of the blood
Speaker 1: vessels and whether they're healthy or not. It's a huge
Speaker 1: predictor of a whole range of diseases. And when you
Speaker 1: hear noise, that's your stressors trigger your endothelium to constrict,
Speaker 1: and that is a really bad thing.
Speaker 2: It is here in the United States. We kind of
Speaker 2: started studying the stuff in earnest in the seventies. That
Speaker 2: was when pollution was a big deal just all around
Speaker 2: in the United States, and we started to say things like, hey,
Speaker 2: maybe you shouldn't just have a family picnic and then
Speaker 2: just pick up your blanket and dump all the trash
Speaker 2: on the ground like they did on that episode of
Speaker 2: Mad Men.
Speaker 1: And Anchor Man when they're all eating McDonald's and they
Speaker 1: throw it on the ground.
Speaker 2: I saw a guy throw a fully like McDonald's thing
Speaker 2: out the window the other day and smashed on the sidewalk.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. And I was just like, who who
Speaker 2: does that? Still?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the problem is we're at a place in
Speaker 1: our country's history where if you confront people like that,
Speaker 1: there's a chance you're going to get shot for confronting
Speaker 1: someone like that. But I don't confront But that's like,
Speaker 1: that is the kind of behavior you should, under normal circumstances,
Speaker 1: non shooting circumstances, feel perfectly fine confronting somebody about and
Speaker 1: being like what is wrong with you? Like, we're so
Speaker 1: far beyond that, Like everyone knows you shouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: It's just, Oh, it drove me insane.
Speaker 2: I got to a good fight with him in my brain.
Speaker 1: Yes, I know, Like what, Like, where's the solution, where's
Speaker 1: the answer?
Speaker 2: I don't know, man. I think the zen path is
Speaker 2: you go pick up that McDonald's cup and throw it
Speaker 2: away totally and and say a prayer for that person
Speaker 2: good luck. So yeah, New York is where they started
Speaker 2: studying this stuff in the seventies because it was kind
Speaker 2: of wrapped up, like I said, folded into larger pollution studies.
Speaker 2: They're like, well, we might as well talk about noise pollution.
Speaker 2: New York is a place to do it, and they
Speaker 2: did there were a couple of studies in the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies about subway noise that really sort of gave put
Speaker 2: the whole thing on some terra firma as far as
Speaker 2: the health effects and learning effects. In the case of
Speaker 2: kids at PS ninety eight Manhattan, it was very close
Speaker 2: to the train tracks there, the subway train tracks, like
Speaker 2: real close, yeah, like two hundred and twenty feet away.
Speaker 2: And they found and this is pretty startling, they found
Speaker 2: that the kids that were closest to the train tracks
Speaker 2: were eleven months behind their classmates that were on the
Speaker 2: other side of the school.
Speaker 1: Yeah, on like not in another school, just on the
Speaker 1: other side of the school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, almost a full well, I mean that is basically
Speaker 2: a full school year, yeah, because you know, with summers
Speaker 2: off and stuff, that's an academic year plus that they
Speaker 2: were behind. And they installed acoustic tiles in the classroom
Speaker 2: and some dampening devices, and they did a follow up
Speaker 2: study and the gap had closed basically, So I mean
Speaker 2: there's proof right there, like your kids are not learning
Speaker 2: as well if they're near that subway noise.
Speaker 1: There's another kind of landmark study in the seventies in
Speaker 1: New York that established the concept of noise pollution at
Speaker 1: a place called the Bridges apartment high rise, or a
Speaker 1: cluster of them in Manhattan that I believe ninety five
Speaker 1: maybe drives under or really really close, and the traffic
Speaker 1: noise is so bad that even as high up as
Speaker 1: the eighth floor, the traffic sound is about the level
Speaker 1: of a vacuum cleaner. And like just sitting in your apartment,
Speaker 1: you have to raise your voice to be heard, which
Speaker 1: I mean, just the stress of that I can't imagine.
Speaker 1: Like that's an inhabitable, uninhabitable place. I believe people are
Speaker 1: still living there as well. But this study found that
Speaker 1: children living there were far behind at reading comprehension, at
Speaker 1: listening comprehension, and just weren't learning as quickly as other
Speaker 1: kids their age who did not live in the Bridges.
Speaker 1: So those two studies together from New York kind of
Speaker 1: established this idea like, Okay, there's a real problem with
Speaker 1: noise pollution, and then it just went away for many,
Speaker 1: many years until about twenty eleven when the who there
Speaker 1: was a bunch of other studies a lot of the
Speaker 1: other ones that we've referenced so far came out around
Speaker 1: twenty ten twenty eleven twenty thirteen. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: exactly kicked it off, but there was a big spade
Speaker 1: of them. But then the WHO released a really big report.
Speaker 1: Not that Who, the band, the World Health Organization.
Speaker 2: They're another loud band actually, and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they felt terribly guilty about causing hearing loss in
Speaker 1: their their fans, so they launched this study of basically
Speaker 1: all of Western Europe. They looked at i think something
Speaker 1: like five hundred different studies and did a meta analysis
Speaker 1: of them to calculate what's called the disability adjusted life
Speaker 1: years or dailies that were lost in Europe every year
Speaker 1: to noise pollution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the idea of a daily is they basically say,
Speaker 2: it's like the healthy years of your life that end
Speaker 2: up being lost to this human made noise that you're
Speaker 2: living with. Right, And it's kind of a sort of
Speaker 2: an esoteric way to think about it, but once you
Speaker 2: wrap your head around it, it makes a little bit more sense.
Speaker 2: But they found that at least one million healthy years
Speaker 2: of life are lost every single year only just in
Speaker 2: Europe due to noise pollution. A million healthy years of
Speaker 2: people's lives right annually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that means because of all of the disease
Speaker 1: burden that noise pollution produces in humans. That that's how
Speaker 1: much of our healthy lifespan is shaved off every year collectively,
Speaker 1: or how much Europe's is. And they did a follow
Speaker 1: up study in twenty eighteen, Chuck, and found that actually, no,
Speaker 1: we got it wrong. It's one point eight million dailies
Speaker 1: are lost in Western Europe alone each year. So they
Speaker 1: definitely established through these couple of who studies, like, noise
Speaker 1: pollution is still a thing and we should probably do
Speaker 1: something about it. And there was another study that was
Speaker 1: released this past year that said, yes, dailies are significant,
Speaker 1: but we may have found a link that shows that
Speaker 1: noise pollution can actually straight up kill you under some
Speaker 1: circumstances potentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this one was this is pretty startling because
Speaker 2: they looked at heart well not necessarily a heart attack,
Speaker 2: but nighttime deaths. No, I guess it was heart attack, yes,
Speaker 2: but if you die overnight, die in your sleep quote
Speaker 2: unquote from heart attacks and the link to commercial aircraft
Speaker 2: flying over your house. And I guess they had a
Speaker 2: way to sort of cancel out all the other factors.
Speaker 2: And they got down to the nitty gritty that three
Speaker 2: percent of all night time deaths from heart attacks can
Speaker 2: be attributed to the sound of aircraft flying overhead while
Speaker 2: you're sleeping.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's just like that was it. That was the
Speaker 1: last stress response that your body could handle, and you
Speaker 1: had a heart attack and died from that sound. They said, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we found a definite correlation, but if there is causation here,
Speaker 1: then we can talk up about three percent of those.
Speaker 1: That's astounding.
Speaker 2: It is astounding. We're going to take a break. That's
Speaker 2: the human grossness, and we'll talk about the awful things
Speaker 2: that we're doing to our animal friends and nature right
Speaker 2: after this. All right, We talked about a lot of
Speaker 2: studies that basically all added up to noise pollution very
Speaker 2: bad for human beings, like literally bad for their health.
Speaker 2: And I know we've talked about a few of these
Speaker 2: before over the years, especially when it comes to whales,
Speaker 2: but all manner of Mother nature are impacted by this noise.
Speaker 2: They did a study in the early two thousands about
Speaker 2: stress hormones.
Speaker 1: For what kind of whales were they right whales.
Speaker 2: Right whales in the Bay of Fundy, And they saw,
Speaker 2: and this is remarkable, they saw a really weird unexplained
Speaker 2: declined in the stress hormone concentrations that went away and
Speaker 2: then came back up again, and they eventually realized it
Speaker 2: was a halt in the shipping in the bay after
Speaker 2: nine to eleven happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because shipping is probably humans' noisiest marine endeavor that
Speaker 1: we do all the time constantly. And the idea of
Speaker 1: a break in that having being connected to a huge
Speaker 1: decline in stress hormones in whale poop, that's significant. But
Speaker 1: it was an accidental discovery, and I think it led
Speaker 1: other people to start studying stuff like that, like the
Speaker 1: effects of noise on wildlife. And there was this I
Speaker 1: think you University of Idaho. I'm sorry if it's Idaho state,
Speaker 1: please don't be mad. I think it's Idaho, okay, a
Speaker 1: study from twenty twelve where researchers set up like what
Speaker 1: they called a phantom road, which is basically they have
Speaker 1: fixed a line of loudspeakers to some trees out in
Speaker 1: the wilderness that stretched about a half a mile in length,
Speaker 1: and they just played road and traffic noise out like
Speaker 1: city stuff, just like the kind of stuff that possibly
Speaker 1: a remote road through the wilderness would sound like. Because
Speaker 1: They recorded it in Glacier National Park on a road there,
Speaker 1: and just from that, just from like this rural Glacier
Speaker 1: National Park road noise, something like more than a quarter
Speaker 1: of all the birds in the area just left. They
Speaker 1: were like, we're moving. Yeah, we're going to Canada. So'd
Speaker 1: everybody in the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think I definitely noticed, and I
Speaker 2: heard other people talk about in like April of last
Speaker 2: year when things really slowed down commuter and traffic wise
Speaker 2: due to the pandemic. And I don't think it was
Speaker 2: just our imaginations, but there were there was a lot
Speaker 2: more bird activity going on, and I remember, I think
Speaker 2: I remember us even talking about it, or maybe it
Speaker 2: was just quieter for us, so we noticed the more
Speaker 2: or maybe a combination of both, but there was a difference.
Speaker 2: And when you know, when shipping stops after nine to
Speaker 2: eleven or when traffic stops, nature says, oh, well the
Speaker 2: human a holes are gone. Now we can start behaving
Speaker 2: normally again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like things are back to normal. And that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just on land. Also, they found that Idaho study
Speaker 1: found that the birds that stuck around lost a bunch
Speaker 1: of weight, which they would have needed to migrate, so
Speaker 1: maybe they couldn't leave even if they wanted to. But
Speaker 1: that was the land study. There's been other studies on land,
Speaker 1: but it seems like the we're doing a lot of
Speaker 1: damage to marine ecosystems as well, like probably even more
Speaker 1: because sound waves travel in water a lot better than light,
Speaker 1: which means that most of the animals that live in
Speaker 1: the water have really sensitive hearing. That's what they've evolved
Speaker 1: to use to communicate and listen out for, right, So
Speaker 1: when we make noise, it's really problematic in marine ecosystems.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we make a lot of noise. I mean
Speaker 2: that shipping activity we talked about is super disruptive to
Speaker 2: anything underwater. When they search for mineral deposits on the
Speaker 2: seafloor or under the sea floor, they use these seismic
Speaker 2: air guns that are you can hear those things like
Speaker 2: a fish can hear that a thousands of miles away.
Speaker 2: Very disruptive. Sonar. I know we talked about sonar in
Speaker 2: an episode years ago and how that affected marine life.
Speaker 2: I can't remember what it was.
Speaker 1: Did we do an entire episode on the time they
Speaker 1: blew up the beach to whale? Like what to do
Speaker 1: with the beach whale.
Speaker 2: Maybe, but they basically kind of say now, like they
Speaker 2: think the reasons whales beach themselves is because of these
Speaker 2: noises and sonar is a big culprit.
Speaker 1: Right, Like it just drives them out of the water,
Speaker 1: which sounds bonkers. But if you ever think about how
Speaker 1: humans sometimes jump from tall buildings rather than being burned
Speaker 1: by the intensity of a fire, I think it's virtually
Speaker 1: the same principle. Sure, so we are we have become
Speaker 1: aware of just how much noise pollution affects not just us,
Speaker 1: but the environment as well. Like it is a form
Speaker 1: of pollution, and it seems like, you know, it started
Speaker 1: to accumulate in the last few years, but really we've
Speaker 1: known for a good fifty years that noise pollution is
Speaker 1: really bad for everybody, and yet we've done almost nothing
Speaker 1: about it. But we had the start, Chuck, We started
Speaker 1: out like we were going to like almost immediately when
Speaker 1: we realized how bad noise pollution was. In the seventies,
Speaker 1: we started to do something about it, and the federal
Speaker 1: government passed like three and actually I saw a fourth
Speaker 1: one huge acts that had to do with basically controlling
Speaker 1: noise pollution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, either controlling noise pollution for people in general, or
Speaker 2: through OSHA, making sure people were working in safe conditions,
Speaker 2: or at least had you know, the earcns and things
Speaker 2: they needed to work safely. And it was, like you said,
Speaker 2: it was headed in the right direction. We knew it
Speaker 2: was bad, and we were trying to stop it. And
Speaker 2: then the Reagan administration came along and said, nuts to that,
Speaker 2: that's federal regulation. Let's just leave it to the states.
Speaker 2: Because you ask any governor of any state and they'll
Speaker 2: tell you their citizens know to do the right thing,
Speaker 2: and they'll do that right thing. And so we'll just
Speaker 2: leave it up to the states and let them they
Speaker 2: volunteer to phase itself out. The Office of Noise and
Speaker 2: Abatement Control on paper still exists, but Congress said, you know,
Speaker 2: let's just not fund them anymore, and let's keep these
Speaker 2: laws on the books, but really not worry about it
Speaker 2: too much because the states will take care of it, right,
Speaker 2: because states always do the right thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the states, of course did absolutely nothing, and
Speaker 1: it's partially because they can't do a lot about it.
Speaker 1: A lot of noise is really best understood, studied, and
Speaker 1: regulated by the federal government. Like what, like Georgia has
Speaker 1: a bunch of money reserved to study the effects of
Speaker 1: noise on humans. Like, no, that's totally a federal kind
Speaker 1: of thing to do, you know, And that's what some
Speaker 1: of those seventies acts set up, like that Office of
Speaker 1: Noise Abatement and Control or Noise Controlling the Baby, Like
Speaker 1: its purpose was to study that kind of stuff. That's
Speaker 1: not what states do. So the states have, well not
Speaker 1: the states, but usually more municipalities and counties have. They
Speaker 1: have taken steps to kind of mitigate sound pollution, Like
Speaker 1: there's your noise pollution. There's usually regulations on how early
Speaker 1: or late a landscaping crew can work within the city limits,
Speaker 1: or some of them say like you can't boom your
Speaker 1: stereo or you're not allowed to have that broken glass
Speaker 1: muffler on your Harley. Like there's some stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But then like if you live kind of under a
Speaker 1: flight path, if your town wanted to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: you can't fly over our town and wake everybody up
Speaker 1: between you know, twelve at night and seven in the morning,
Speaker 1: you can't fly an airplane over it. The airplanes would
Speaker 1: just be like like I didn't hear you, Sorry, I
Speaker 1: was listening to the FEDS who say you can't make
Speaker 1: laws like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I get the feeling with municipalities.
Speaker 2: It is more like complaints from neighbors kind of noise
Speaker 2: or the lawn cruise in construction like you were saying,
Speaker 2: unless like stuff with big teeth recently. Weird reason I
Speaker 2: won't get into, but I was looking up noise ordinances
Speaker 2: and Athens, Georgia, and they're kind of funny when you
Speaker 2: look at these noise ordinances. It's like it literally said,
Speaker 2: like you know, walking down the sidewalk yelling at one another,
Speaker 2: talking about basically drunk kids, you know, like the French
Speaker 2: quarter kind of thing. It said, you know, this includes
Speaker 2: hooting and hollering, and it was something about being able
Speaker 2: to hear you from like three hundred feet away, but
Speaker 2: or noise from your apartment. But it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: like good luck with that. Like you can call the
Speaker 2: cops on someone maybe, yeah, but there's no teeth or
Speaker 2: or or what do you call it when you or
Speaker 2: enforcement kind of with a lot of this stuff, aside
Speaker 2: from singling out people when it happens in the moment
Speaker 2: and you may get a cop come by and say,
Speaker 2: turn it down.
Speaker 1: But even if if there's a will to do something,
Speaker 1: it depends on if it's like rail traffic or air traffic.
Speaker 1: Like the federal the federal government ties local towns and
Speaker 1: counties hands like they can't do anything about it, and
Speaker 1: there's as a result, there's a lot of noise pollution
Speaker 1: that people can't do anything about. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: town in Canada. I can't remember the name of it,
Speaker 1: but it is. It's got rail like a rail system
Speaker 1: that goes through it, and it doesn't have like alarms
Speaker 1: or like the arms that come down. So trains have
Speaker 1: to honk their horns at least three times as they
Speaker 1: cross through this town. And there's a bunch of different crossings,
Speaker 1: and they calculated that train horns blair twelve hundred times
Speaker 1: a day in this little tiny town. And like obviously
Speaker 1: everybody's going nuts, but they can't do anything about it
Speaker 1: because the federal government of Canada is in charge of
Speaker 1: regulating rail travel like every other developed or industrialized country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even if it's something like Osha and like
Speaker 2: you work in a loud factory and they're trying to
Speaker 2: regulate that, they say that a they don't cover all
Speaker 2: industries they should cover, and when they do, it's very
Speaker 2: inconsistently applied. And even when they do apply it inconsistently,
Speaker 2: they say that these limits aren't even low enough to
Speaker 2: protect all the workers anyway from hearing loss. It said,
Speaker 2: OSHA regulations allow workers to be exposed to ninety five
Speaker 2: decibels for four hours a day, five days a week
Speaker 2: for your entire forty year career. And that's like, you're
Speaker 2: going to suffer from hearing loss if that's the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like holding a leaf blower right next to
Speaker 1: you for four hours a day, five days a week
Speaker 1: for forty years. Like of course you're yeah to lose
Speaker 1: your hearing. Like that's crazy.
Speaker 2: Well, and then factor in the other health effects that
Speaker 2: no one ever talks about that we mentioned in the
Speaker 2: whole first half of this thing, and you have an
Speaker 2: unhealthy population if you're stuck in one of those places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we can sit here and cavetch all day,
Speaker 1: which we would love to do. But there are solutions
Speaker 1: to this. But I want to point out one more time,
Speaker 1: all these solutions are zero thanks to the Reagan administration. Instead,
Speaker 1: there's some simple stuff you can do to help us humans,
Speaker 1: Like you can change aircraft routes, you can build barriers
Speaker 1: along roadways and railways. You can even green it up,
Speaker 1: like they found that if you use shrubbery and trees
Speaker 1: mixed together so that they basically produce a fence and
Speaker 1: you plant them close to the road or close to
Speaker 1: the railway rather than close to the place that you're
Speaker 1: trying to protect, they do pretty good at reducing the
Speaker 1: decibels of the sound the noise pollution coming from the traffic.
Speaker 1: That's some easy stuff you can do. And then on
Speaker 1: the user end, on the individual's end, there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of like acoustic insulation and paneling you can add to
Speaker 1: your house to make it a little more soundproof and quieter.
Speaker 1: What about this mufflers.
Speaker 2: Chuck car mufflers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so apparently the ones that make the sound or
Speaker 1: not not they're not good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that they could, they could change that.
Speaker 2: The EPA could get involved and say, you know what,
Speaker 2: you can't have those kind of mufflers anymore.
Speaker 1: Thank god if they did.
Speaker 2: As far as the shipping go, I know, it's always
Speaker 2: like a Honda Civic or something that's like tricked out,
Speaker 2: like it's some kind of race car as far as
Speaker 2: the water goes in the shipping stuff like that. Those
Speaker 2: big ships. They found that if they separate the ship's
Speaker 2: engine from the hull, they are quieter, much quieter, And
Speaker 2: they even found that there is I think there's a
Speaker 2: seventy five percent reduction in acoustic energy six to eight decibels,
Speaker 2: which is significant. And they also found that it is
Speaker 2: less fuel efficient. And if they like retrofitted or kind
Speaker 2: of changed the way they built these ships, I don't
Speaker 2: know if you can. Well, I guess you can retrofit someone.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, the propellers are what's making them less fuel efficient,
Speaker 1: so you can ease not easily, but you can take
Speaker 1: off the old propellers and put on new ones.
Speaker 2: Right, But it cast a lot of money up front,
Speaker 2: like they will save in the long run. And I
Speaker 2: think is it pronounced Maersk, the big shipping company. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they spend one hundred million bucks to do just eleven
Speaker 2: of its ships, So that gives you the idea of
Speaker 2: how much it costs. There may be see some efficiencies
Speaker 2: if they did more or something, but it's not cheap.
Speaker 2: And they have seven hundred and forty ships. They've done eleven, so.
Speaker 1: Well, I did see that is actually a very small
Speaker 1: fraction of all of the ships involved in shipping that
Speaker 1: are responsible for the vast majority of the noise. So
Speaker 1: if you did just focus on the worst offenders, it
Speaker 1: would have a significant impact.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's also a huge amount of noise, apparently underwater noise
Speaker 1: that comes from offshore wind farms because of the pile
Speaker 1: driver that is moved by up and down by the
Speaker 1: blades to help produce the electricity to move the turbine.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right.
Speaker 1: And they found that if you just put a perforated
Speaker 1: pipe around the pile driver, the pile driver's going to
Speaker 1: produce bubbles and those bubbles will dissipate the noise. Almost
Speaker 1: all the noise I think like ninety five percent of
Speaker 1: the noise coming from those offshore wind farms. That's a
Speaker 1: really simple, easy solution.
Speaker 2: Just do it people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's one other thing that I hadn't thought about,
Speaker 1: but I saw a couple places, and it really makes sense,
Speaker 1: is that the noise pollution we're contributing to marine ecosystems
Speaker 1: in particular is just such low hanging fruit that there's
Speaker 1: no reason we shouldn't do this. There's some really easy
Speaker 1: stuff we can do, Like even re routing shipping lanes
Speaker 1: is one thing we can do, and that by doing
Speaker 1: that it will actually stabilize marine ecosystems and marine life
Speaker 1: so that it will buy us a little time while
Speaker 1: we're figuring out much trickier stuff like ocean acidification and
Speaker 1: things that are also threats to it. So it's like,
Speaker 1: just removing noise pollution would really go a long way
Speaker 1: toward extending the I guess the health and vitality of
Speaker 1: the oceans while they're you know, while we're combating climate change.
Speaker 2: I love it. Let's get all these things going. Our
Speaker 2: health is suffering.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the mufflers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's just annoyance and health.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, since Chuck said that's just annoyance, of course, everybody,
Speaker 1: that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: This one's pretty short and sweet. I just love it
Speaker 2: when we get an answer about something. I think I
Speaker 2: might have known this at some point, but we talked
Speaker 2: about shrinking as humans. And this is from Steve in Roscoe, Illinois.
Speaker 2: He says, I've been a longtime listener, never had a
Speaker 2: reason to reach out, but you hit my air of expertise.
Speaker 2: I'm a physical therapist, and while listening to the episode
Speaker 2: about crash testing, you ask why do we shrink when
Speaker 2: we get older. What happens is we age, guys, is
Speaker 2: the enter vertebral disks in our back loose hydration, and
Speaker 2: as a result, we shrink. There are six discs in
Speaker 2: the cervical spine, twelve discs in the thoracic spine, and
Speaker 2: five discs in the lambar. If each disc were to
Speaker 2: lose a minimum one sixteenth of an inch in height,
Speaker 2: that adds up pretty quickly and you can easily lose
Speaker 2: an inch plus in your lifetime.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: The other thing to consider as we age, as our
Speaker 2: muscles and tissues get tighter, pulls us into positions of
Speaker 2: poor posture. That's right, and this restricts our ability to
Speaker 2: stand up straight. You combine all these things together and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, Josh isn't going to hit his
Speaker 2: goal height of six feet.
Speaker 1: I have to stay on my tippy toes now.
Speaker 2: Thanks for all the good work. I hope it didn't
Speaker 2: step on the toes of a future short stuff. I
Speaker 2: think we just did it. Steve, that's Steve Marima or
Speaker 2: Merima from Roscoe, Illinois.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Steve. That was a good email. We
Speaker 1: appreciate that big time. And if you haven't stumbled upon
Speaker 1: it yet, you should check out our episode on Circopania.
Speaker 1: It is old, but it was interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If you have any ethysical therapy needs in Illinois,
Speaker 2: give Steve a call. Sounds good guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, head to beautiful Roscoe, Illinois. Come on, if you
Speaker 1: want to be like Steve from Roscoe and give us
Speaker 1: some more info that we were asking for. We love
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. You can send it to us
Speaker 1: via email to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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