the 21st century, there would be a shortage of water and silence. They were correct. Silence is scarce. More and more silence is drowned out by sound.
A lack of knowledge about the effects of noise pollution on humans in comparison to other pollutants
has been lacking as an area of research. Although it has been generally regarded that noise pollution is primarily a luxury' problem-for those developed countries able to afford the purchase price of large quantities of loud, noisy machinery - it is a fact that due to bad planning and poor construction of buildings, noise exposure is often higher in developing countries. This means that regardless of the economic status of a particular country, the effects of noise are just as widespread and the long-term consequences for health are the same.
It has been well established that exposure to loud noises for extended periods causes trauma to the inner ear and often results in irreversible hearing loss. When it initially receives sound, the human ear amplifies it by a factor of 20. In 1965, in a remote part of Ghana, scientists went about studying the impact of 'insignificant' exposure to industrial noise and transportation. In tandem,the Ghanese group was compared with a control group in the industrial USA. Several startling conclusions were drawn from the experiments. For example, both locations revealed that aging is an almost insignificant cause of hearing loss. Instead, it was shown that chronic exposure to moderately high levels of environmental noise led to hearing loss. Cardiovascular complaints also emerged from among those with prolonged exposure to industrial noise above 70 dBA. In fact, over a single eight-hour period, it was shown that participants experienced a rise in blood pressure thus
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