The invisible killer throughout our lives

We are surrounded by an invisible killer. One so common that we barely notice that it shortens our lives.

This causes heart attacks, type 2 diabetes and is now even studying it with dementia.

What do you think it can be?

The answer is noise – and its impact on the human body goes beyond the harm of hearing.

“This is a crisis of public health, we have a huge number of people exposed in their daily lives,” says Prof. Charlotte Clark of St. George, University of London.

It’s just a crisis we’re not talking about.

So I investigate when the noise becomes dangerous, talking to people whose health is suffering and sees if there is any way to overcome our noise from noise.

I started meeting Prof. Clark in a sinister silent sound laboratory. We will see how my body reacts to the noise and I was equipped with a device that looks like a clumsy smart watch.

This will measure my heart rate and how much my skin sweats.

You can also join if you have some headsets. Think about how these five sounds make you feel.

The one I find really grate is the noise of the traffic from Dhaka, Bangladesh, who has the title of the most noisy city in the world. Immediately I feel like I’m in a magnificent, stressful traffic jam.

And the sensors raise my excitement – my heart rate shoots and my skin sweats more.

“There is really good evidence that the noise of traffic affects the health of your heart,” says Prof. Clark, as the next sound is prepared.

Only the joyful sounds of the playground have a calming effect on my body. Dogs bark and a neighbor’s party in the early hours lead to a negative answer.

But why does the sound change my body?

“You have an emotional response to the sound,” says Prof. Clark.

The sound is detected by the ear and transmitted to the brain and a region – the amygdala – performs emotional evaluation.

It is part of the reaction of a fight or a flight of the body that has evolved to help us respond quickly to sounds as a predator who crashes through the bushes.

“So your heart rate goes up, your nervous system starts to enter and release the hormones of stress,” Prof. Clark tells me.

All this is good in emergencies, but over time it begins to cause damage.

“If you have been exposed for several years, your body reacts that all the time, this increases the risk of developing things like heart attacks, high blood pressure, stroke and type 2 diabetes,” says Prof. Clark.

Insidiously, this even happens while we fall asleep quickly. You may think you adapt to the noise. I thought I was doing it when I lived in a rent near an airport. But biology tells a different story.

“You never turn off your ears; when you sleep, you still listen. So these answers, like your heart rate, it happens, it happens as you sleep,” added Prof. Clark.

The noise is an unwanted sound. Transport – traffic, trains and planes – are a major source, but the sounds are also good to have fun. One person’s big party is another’s unbearable noise.

I meet Coco in her apartment on the fourth floor in the historic district of Vila de gràcia in Barcelona, ​​Spain.

There is a bag of freshly selected lemons tied to her door, endowed by one neighbor, her refrigerator contains tortillas made by another and she offers me fantastic cakes made by a third neighbor who trains at Patisserie.

From the balcony you can see the famous cathedral in the city, Sagrada Familia. It’s easy to understand why Coco has fallen in love with living here, but it comes at a huge price and thinks she will be forced to leave.

“It’s extremely noisy … it’s a 24-hour noise,” she tells me. There is a dog park for owners to walk with their fluffy, which “barks at 2, 3, 4, 5 in the morning”, and the yard is a public space that is used for everything from children’s birthdays to all-day concerts finished with fireworks.

She pulls out her phone and plays the music records, which has blown up so hard that she makes the glass in her windows to vibrate.

Her home should be a refuge from the stress of work, but the noise “brings powerlessness, I feel like crying.”

She has been “hospitalized twice with chest pain” and “absolutely” that noise causes the stress that harms her health. “There is a physical change that I feel is doing something to your body for sure,” she says.

There are approximately 300 heart attacks in Barcelona and 30 deaths a year only from the noise of traffic, according to researcher D -R Maria Foraster, who has reviewed evidence of noise for the World Health Organization.

Across Europe The noise is associated with 12,000 early deaths a year, as well as millions of cases of severely disturbed sleep, as well as serious noise irritation, which can affect mental health.

I meet D -R Foraster at a cafe, which is separated from one of the most busy roads of Barcelona from a small park. My sound meter says that the noise of distant traffic is just over 60 decibels here.

We can easily talk about the noise without raising our voices, but this is already an unhealthy volume.

The decisive number of heart health is 53 decibels, she tells me, and the higher you go, the more the health risks are.

“This 53 means we have to be in a very quiet environment,” says Dr. Foraster.

And this is only during the day, we need even smaller sleep levels. “We need silence at night,” she says.

Although it is not just about the volume, how destructive the sound is and how much control you have on it, it affects our emotional response to noise.

Freaster claims that the impact of noise in health is “at the level of air pollution”, but it is much more difficult to understand.

“We are used to understanding that chemicals can affect health and they are toxic, but it is not so simple to understand that the physical factor, such as noise, affects our health beyond our hearing,” she says.

A strong party can be the fun that makes life worth living and some other intolerable noise.

The sound of traffic has the most important effect on health because so many people are exposed to it. But traffic is also the sound of work, shopping and taking the children to school. Dealing with noise means asking people to live their lives differently – which creates their own problems.

Dr. Natalie Mueller, from the Barcelona Global Health Institute, takes me for a walk around the city center. We start on a busy road-my watches on the sound meter in over 80 decibels-we head to a quiet alley lined with trees, where the noise is up to the 50’s.

But there is something different in this street – it was a busy road before, but the space was given to pedestrians, cafes and gardens. I see the ghost of old crossed roads in the shape of the flower beds. Vehicles can still go down here, just slowly.

Remember in the laboratory earlier, we have found that some sounds can soothe the body.

“It’s not completely silent, but it’s a different perception of sound and noise,” says Dr. Müller.

The original plan was to create more than 500 areas such as the one called “Superblocks” – suitable for pedestrians areas created by grouping several city blocks together.

D -Müller carried out the survey Designing a 5-10% reduction in noise in the city, which will prevent “150 premature deaths” only from noise every year. And this will be “only the tip of the iceberg” of health benefits.

But in reality, only six super blocks were built. The City Council declined to comment.

However, the dangers of noise continue to grow. Urbanization puts more people in noisy cities.

Dhaka, Bangladesh, is one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the world. This brought more traffic and gave the city a cocoa soundtrack to the horns.

The artist Momina Raman Royal won the Lone Hero label as his silent protests turned their attention to the problem of noise in the city.

In about 10 minutes, he stands at the intersection of several busy roads with a large yellow plate accusing drivers who lift their horns very much that they cause great inconvenience.

He took the mission after his daughter was born. “I want to stop everyone who is heard not only by Dhaka but also by Banglades,” he says.

“If you see the birds or trees or rivers, no one makes noise without humans, so people are responsible.”

But there is also the beginning of political actions. Syeda Rizwana Hasan, who is an environmental advisor and Bangladesh’s government minister, told me that he was “very worried” by the impact of noise in health.

There is a repression of horn haircuts to reduce noise levels – with a campaign for awareness and a more advanced implementation of existing laws.

She said, “It is impossible to do it in a year or two years, but I think it is possible to ensure that the city becomes less noisy and when people feel it, they feel better when it is less noisy, I am sure that their habit will change too.”

Noise solutions can be difficult, complex and challenging to solve.

What I have left is a new appreciation for finding a small space in our lives to escape from the noise, because in the words of Dr. Masruv Abdul Quader, from the University of Bangladesh, this is “silent killer and slow poison”.

Loud is manufactured by Gary Holt. Additional reporting from Bangladesh by Salman Said