Can noise harm our health?
Inside Health
BBC
4.4 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From ear-splitting aircraft noise and the drone of traffic to the hum of an open-plan office, the world around us can feel loud.
But is it getting louder? And is this having any effect on our health - and even on how long we live?
We find out when living close to a road, railway or airport might go from nuisance to health hazard, with potential effects on our sleep, heart health, mood and concentration.
It’ll get loud as we do some tests in a lab to explore how unwanted sound might affect the rest of the body beyond our ears, and we sift through the growing research on the impact of noise. Who might be most at risk and why?
We also find out why our reaction to noise might be about more than just volume - and we go in search of some simple tips to help.
Keep in touch with the Inside Health team at insidehealth@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: James Gallagher Producer: Gerry Holt Researcher: Amy Ringrose Editor: Martin Smith Production coordinator: Connor Morgans
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Greg Jenna and good news, Your Dead to Me is back for a new series. Here we go. Yes, we'll explore Emperor Nero's notorious reign with Professor Marybeard and Patton Oswald. I would not want my daughter having the remote control, not alone an empire. We'll dissect the decadent life of Philippe Duke-Dor-Leon with Tom Allen. I've often tried to pretend I'm an aristocrat and being very quickly knocked down. |
| 0:23.0 | And there'll be so much more with comedians like Olga Koch, Mike Mosniak and Rihalina. |
| 0:26.9 | I'm excited. |
| 0:27.6 | You're dead to me, the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. |
| 0:30.9 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.3 | This is a sound meter and it tells me how loud my life is. |
| 0:39.3 | No. |
| 0:39.8 | I want to know first of all how loud you are. |
| 0:45.8 | 127 decibels. |
| 0:48.3 | You are so loud. |
| 0:50.3 | Yes. |
| 0:53.5 | Hello everyone and welcome to the Inside Health podcast. |
| 0:56.9 | I've been off for five months with a new baby. |
| 1:00.6 | Life is lovely, but I'll be honest, really quite loud. |
| 1:05.5 | And it's the health impacts of sound that we're going to be talking about this week. |
| 1:10.2 | I'm going to be experimented |
| 1:11.6 | on in a bit to explore how noise affects our whole body, so not just our ears. But first, I'm |
| 1:18.1 | going to keep the sound meter with me and see how loud my life really is. So this is one of the |
| 1:24.4 | noisiest stretches of my walk into work. Just the background hum is about 70 decibels, about 80 when the cars are going past. |
| 1:31.8 | But that motorbike, if you heard it, that was over 90 decibels. |
| 1:40.5 | Ah, well, now the newborn has stopped crying and just crashed on me. |
| 1:44.7 | I can tell you that those were about decibels in the high 80s, someone like 88. |
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