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societies loses
twmty
decibels of his
lower hearing range by age sixty, and
thirty
decibels by age seventy. Even
those in their forties have lost an aver–
age of
len
decibels of their youthful
hearing range.
What causes this? Is this normal -
to be expected?
Enter a Q uiet World
Enter the Mabaan culture of Sudan.
Noise levels of these "uncivilized" peo–
ples are very low. They don't use guns
oc drums. Only a few times a year are
their ears assailed by thunderclaps, the
roar of a wild animal, or their own fes–
tivc singing and shouting.
Dr. Samuel Rosen studied these
people and found sorne amazing results.
"There is no obesity ... there is a total
lack of hypertension, coronary throm–
bosis, ulcerative colitis, acute appendi–
citis, duodenal ulcer, and bronchial
asthma -:- ailments common in Western
civilization.
"The ten-year-old and the ninety–
year-old Mabaans have exactly the same
b/ood presmre
levels," said the report.
In Americans considered normally
heal thy, blood pressure levels usually
incre:ISC:
progressively with age, espe–
cially after forty.
An important discovery Dr. Rosen
made was that "the Mabaans suffered
very little
hearing /oss
in the high fre–
quencies wíth advancing age. The hear–
ing of the elderly Mabaans was
fa,.
superior to o/der people in civi/ized
countries;
and the Mabaans had
Jltpe–
rior hearing to any other gro11p of
h11mans ever tested"
(
Sat11rday Review,
May
27, 1967).
It is not "normal" to lose hearíng,
gain in blood pressure, and suffer stress–
índuced diseases with advancing age.
Yet our hectic, stress-ridden, and noise–
polluted
.rociety
is bequeathing these
curses to us!
And Now-Supersonic Transports
The mushrooming ooise pollution
problem has spurned sorne attempts to
control it. Many industries are working
on toning clown the clamorous sound
of their operations. Sorne cities are
developing noise abatement programs,
particularly in relation to the regula–
tion of aircraft fiight patterns or the
location of airports.
The
PLAIN TRUTH
But still the volume of noise mounts
as cities grow larger and society becomes
more dependent on powerful machinery.
The biggest problem that worries
acoustical engineers is the burgeoning
growth of air transportation - with the
inevitable emergence of the SST's–
supersonic transports.
The Federal Aviation Agency predicts
a world air-traflic market in
1990
that
will be five times the
1965
market size.
By then, unless their production is
halted or cut back, as many as
800
SST's may
be
in regular sen•ice.
When SST's start flying, they will
create "sonic booms" causing bone–
shaking jolts -like an explosion only
a block away. (A sonic boom is the
shock wave produced by a plane flying
faster than the speed of sound - about
740
miles per hour at sea leve!.)
The zone where the sonic boom will
be heard ( and felt) will be everywhere
along the whole supersonic flight path
- from
50
to
70
miles wide and as
far as the plane flies at that speed -
perhaps
2,000
to
3,000
miles long.
A blue-ribbon panel of scientists told
the U. S. government that up to
40
mil–
lion Americans could be bombarded as
often as
50
times a day during the next
decade by sonic booms created by SST's.
A sonic boom from the SST would be
equivalent to the noise from a diese!
tractor-trailer truck roaring by at 60
miles an hour, only
30
feet away. Add
to this the
tmexpected
nature of the
thunderous clap characteristic of the
sonic boom.
Professor Garrett J . Hardin, expert in
acoustics at University of California at
Santa Barbara, describes a sonic boom
this way: "Sonic boom is something
much worse than noise. Experienciog
it is like living inside a drum beaten by
an idiot at insane intervals."
In order to prepare for the supersonic
jet age, Los Angeles is already construct–
ing a great new airport. It will be
situated in Palmdale, which is located
beyond the San Gabriel mountains,
which form the northern boundary of
the Lost Angeles basin. It is planned
that wheo it opens in
1978,
the new
International Airport will be larger in
area than the John F. Kennedy in New
York, Chicago's O'Hare Ficld, San Fran–
cisco International, and the present
Augusr·September 1970
Los Angdes Jnternational-
combined
/
How to facilítate the ground transfer
of the expected scores of millions of
passengers per year across or around the
mountains to the new airport may prove
to be a monumental problem.
Many residents in Palmdale do not
look forward to either the ground traffic
or the thunderous roar of the SST's.
Even at sub-sonic speeds, the SST
promises to be noisier than today's jets
because of its powerful turbojet, rather
than fanjet, engines.
Sorne experts, noting the tremendous
upsurge in air travel, are not comforted
by present governmental assurances that
the SST's will
By
at supersonic speeds
only over water. Competjtive pressurc,
these experts warn, will gradually force
air carriers to
By
above the speed of
sound ovcr land as well.
A group calling itself Citizens League
Against the Sonic Boom says this: "The
SST would create a new kind of pollu–
tion - a
WORLDWIDE
sonic pollution.
Hour after hour, day and night, week–
days and holidays, it would infiict its
startling bang on Jiterally hundreds of
millions of defenseless persons, with no
place of refuge."
What's Ahead?
Noise levels of the future are not
pleasant to contemplate. At the present
rate of noise increase - it doubles every
ten years- physicist Vern Knudsen
predicts that downtown areas of the
largest cities will become as deadly as
the ancient Chinese noise tortures!
As long as man continues to push
production, to industrialize, to worship
the gross national product, there appears
to be no human solution to the mount–
ing noise pollution crisis.
Says Leo
L.
Beranek, an expert on
noise:
"lt
is clear that the basic problem
is essentially incurable; noise is an
uoavoidable price we must pay for a
machine civilization."
It is one more facet of the awesome
environmental crisis tbreatening to over–
whelm mankind.
If
you want to understand the entire
story of global pollutioo, write for our
FREE
booklct,
011r Poll111ed PlaneJ.
Jt
explains the gravity of the pollution
crisis and how it affects you and your
family.
o