CAN anyone hear me? I’m not deaf, just trying to make myself heard over the white noise in this city.
Council leaf blowers, doof-doof car mega-stereos, bikie exhaust farts, reversing trucks with high-pitched beep-beeps, barking dogs, construction site jack-hammers, 4am bar crowds, shouting, pub fights and broken glass, ambulance sirens, drive-by shootings, fire engines rushing with klaxons blaring for no reason on empty roads: all these are brain-piercing noises that warrant a human rights violation investigation.
In high-rise areas triple even glazing isn’t enough it seems.
We feel like the distraught, ear-muffled character in Edvard Munch’s famous artwork, The Scream.
Some residential zones have now reached 10 out of 10 on my Edvard Munch Scream Scale.
We’re living in disturbia, not suburbia.
And don’t tell people to move to the leafy suburbs; we’re shackled to mortgages.
Experts say we need eight hours of sleep a day, but all this excessive noise makes this impossible.
Without sufficient ZZZs, stress, anxiety, irritability, memory loss, accident rates, depression, bipolar disorder and heart attacks will all increase. Lack of sleep reduces work efficiency, the healing of wounds, and immunity rates.
Human rights groups say sleep deprivation is torture and contrary to Article 5 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “No one shall be subject to torture or cruel, inhuman treatment.”
Clearly, inner-city residents are revolting. Politicians are quick to sniff an opportunity for popularity and now want remedies to curb noise. However, they are often the source of the problem.
Councils, for example, should stop using leaf blowers and introduce 100-metre pub/club buffer zones to protect what I call our LIFE quotient, a livability index-factored equation measuring amenity values: our right to live in and enjoy our chosen environment.
And Police should set up permanent road closures in areas where car hoons congregate.
Personally, I can’t wait for the forthcoming nostalgia tour of Simon and Garfunkel to again hear their hit, Sounds Of Silence.
Andrew’s commentary on the noise plague is essential reading for all those involved in preserving even the simplest elements of urban life — worldwide. The deliberate “creation” of noise for its own sake suggests that those who do so have already detroyed their good sense, responsibility,judgement and hearing. Next to drugs and armaments (and/or alongside those)noise pollution is the greatest single destroyer of personal amenity in the world.
I like Simon and Garfunkel and always have. But how can I listen to it with constant car and bike traffic at all hours?
Don’t I have any rights, or do other peoples’ so-called rights to make a noise overule mine?
And this really riles me: have you noticed how bikies where helmets, thus limiting their own capacity to hear the din they create?