Season 6 Episode 5

Loud Noises, Louder Consequences

Growing up, I always hated loud noises. Fireworks scared me straight, the county fair chainsaw carvings made me spit out my turkey leg, and the fourth-grade fire drill might as well have been the Grim Reaper knocking on my door. When I finally got a phone, the best part wasn’t playing Jetpack Joyride, it was getting a text that dinner was ready — rather than a yell.

As I aged, my disdain for loud noises never changed, but not everything loud is created equal. Sporting events and concerts are as loud as can be, but have you ever seen a game at Neyland Stadium — I witnessed the loudest college football moment ever recorded — or listened to Manchild by Sabrina Carpenter live? People in the hundreds of thousands screaming together did not feel like noise; it felt like music to my ears, literally and figuratively.

Sound versus noise is much more than an argument of semantics. In this episode of PHPod, guest Erica Walker, assistant professor of epidemiology at Brown University School of Public Health and founder of the Community Noise Lab, describes noise as when a sound becomes irritating. But, she says, simply categorizing sounds by their loudness inhibits our ability to provide nuanced health advice on safe hearing.

Regardless of whether we hear sound or noise, at a certain loudness — quantified by noise levels above 85 decibels (dBA) — there is a risk of hearing loss. OSHA defines this level of noise as the need to raise your voice when speaking to another individual within 3 feet. Unlike other health consequences, like hypertension, hearing — as of now — does not have a way of being fixed.

PHPod host Jack Mellom recently sat down with Walker to talk about noise and sound, answering questions like: has everything always been this loud? Inner ear versus over-ear headphones? And, of course, what are our favorite sounds?