It's official - the world is getting noisier. Photo: 123RF
It's official - the world is getting noisier. Silence is disappearing, increasing stress, raising blood pressure, having a bearing on cardiovascular disease, dementia, diabetes, and of course, hearing loss.
The World Health Organization says this comes at a cost of 1 million healthy life years every year in Europe alone, with 20 percent of Europeans claiming to be suffering physically because of noise.
Science writer Kayt Sukel has been looking into how we can all get some peace and quiet.
"A lot of us now, especially during the Covid pandemic when we started working from home… while the outside world was getting quieter, our houses - our usual places of refuge - were getting a lot louder," she told RNZ's Sunday Morning.
Her experience included a neighbour with a leaf blower, kids playing on phones and gaming consoles and listening to music, and her husband constantly on work Zoom calls.
"It was a cacophony of beeps, bells, whistles, videogame noises, it was insane. We can close our eyes… we can't close our ears.
"Our brains are finetuned for sudden our loud noises - in the past, that was a threat. That was a predator coming towards you… it was something you had to pay attention to right away. Raised the cortisol, got you ready to fight or fly. But now it's just your phone alert going off all the time."
"We can close our eyes… we can't close our ears."
Silence can be so rare, people with the means are literally buying it.
"I have a friend right now in Thailand, it's a wellness retreat and for four hours a day, nobody speaks at all," said Sukel. "She's paying for the privilege, and a lot of people are right now."
In her research, Sukel tried a sensory deprivation tank. Even that was not completely silent.
"I was hyper aware of the sound of the water moving against my body; of my breath; I could hear my heartbeat. I found it very, very relaxing. I ended up falling asleep - I had a very vivid dream about shoe-shopping with the actress Courtney Cox, from Friends… she had very odd taste in shoes. It was definitely relaxing.
Now, whether it's worth the cost and making it part of your regular routine, is sort of another question. But I did enjoy it."