Why too much noise is damaging our health - The Sunday Story
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 7 December 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jet engines, the neighbour's lawnmower, traffic noise - it's all terrible for our health. Yet for many years the issue has been dismissed, described as the "poor cousin” of other environmental issues such as litter, air pollution and climate change. So with prolonged noise pollution linked to nearly 1,000 premature deaths in Britain in 2017, why isn't it taken more seriously? How exactly does the daily onslaught of noise affect us? And just why is it so bad for our health?
Written and read by: Ben Spencer, Science Editor, The Sunday Times.
Producer and sound designer: Dave Creasey.
Clips: epidemicsound, BBC.
Photo: Getty Images.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story on Sunday. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm Manvian Rana. |
| 0:09.0 | Hello, my name's Ben Spencer. |
| 0:23.6 | I'm the science editor of the Sunday Times. |
| 0:30.6 | The soundtrack to modern life is a noisy one. |
| 0:39.3 | The roar of a motorbike in the early hours. |
| 0:42.3 | A stranger's phone blaring TikTok videos. |
| 0:45.3 | The drilling and clattering of a building site. |
| 0:48.3 | I'm going to be a man of a flat. Well. We dismiss this daily racket as an annoyance, but a growing body of research suggests it is also playing havoc with our health. |
| 1:06.0 | Society has certainly gotten louder, says Charlotte Clark, Professor of Environmental Epidemiology at City St George's University of London. |
| 1:16.9 | We are seeing denser living and increasing urbanisation. |
| 1:20.9 | We now live so close to each other that the noise of others' domesticity is a daily intrusion. Next door's whites on a spin cycle, the |
| 1:34.2 | thrum of a lawnmower, or particularly egregious, a neighbour's alarm clock sounding before you're |
| 1:42.3 | quite ready to wake up. But is the sound of other people being transported around that is the real threat to our health? |
| 1:54.0 | According to the latest estimates by the European Environment Agency, 13.8 million people in the UK are exposed to long-term road noise of more than 55 decibels, the level at which the World Health Organisation considers health is disturbed. |
| 2:14.6 | First class accommodation is at is actually real trade. |
| 2:18.3 | Rail noise above this level affects 1.7 million of us and airplanes affect 1.1 million. |
| 2:25.3 | This auditory onslaught has a profound effect. |
| 2:31.3 | Across Europe, noise is now thought to be responsible for 1.1% of all premature mortality. |
| 2:37.0 | It's a public health problem, says Clark. |
| 2:40.0 | Yet for many years it's been dismissed. |
| 2:42.0 | They're poor cousin to other environmental issues such as litter, air pollution and climate change. |
... |
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