Noise used to be pretty much a localized phenomenon, a neighborhood nuisance perhaps, but not a city-wide or national affliction. Now we seem to be crossing over a threshold; generalized noise such as that coming from the interstate truck route or the flight path of jet planes commands increasing public attention. This has been emphasized recently by the experience some of us have had already with the sonic boom, once styled by the Air Force as "The sound of freedom." Within a decade sonic booms may become a common daily occurrence.
According to a group of scientists who reported on sonic booms to the Secretary of the Interior last year (Noise and the Sonic Boom in Relation to Man), "Each boom would be perceived by its hearers as equivalent in annoyance to the noise of a large truck travelling at sixty miles per hour at a distance of about thirty feet." The group went on to say that the number of supersonic transport planes (SST's) expected sometime after 1975 "would subject between 20 and 40 million Americans under a path 12.5 miles on either side of the expected flight tracks to five to fifty booms per day ... an additional 35 to 65 million people within 12.5 to 25 miles of the flight path would be subjected to one to fifty booms per day of somewhat lower intensity, and 13 to 25 million more would experience one to four high intensity booms."
The economics of the SST hinges in large part on whether SST flights are confined to transocean flights or are permitted to operate over land. If only overwater flights are allowed, for the United States this would mean flights to other continents from coastal airports plus domestic overwater flights between airports on the same coast—for example, between New York and Miami. This limitation would cut by more than half the estimated number of SST's that would be placed in operation, with attendant implications for the cost of the planes. Should domestic transcontinental flights be permitted, most people living in the long rectangle bounded by Boston, Washington, Los Angeles, and San Francisco would be under the sonic boom carpets except for those living within 150 miles of the airports.
A truly major social decision will have to be made during the next few years on whether the government and private program for a fleet of SST's should go forward. Noise is only one consideration in this decision. On the one side are those who argue for faster air transportation, maintenance of American technical superiority in the airplane industry, improvement of the US balance of payments through large sales of SST's abroad rather than purchase of foreign-built SST's, and national prestige as a whole. On the other side are those who believe that the extra few hours of time saved are not worth it, that the billions that would have to go into the achievement of a fleet of SST's could better be spent in other ways, both public and private, that the possible criss-crossing of the country with sonic boom carpets would cause important psychological and aesthetic damage and degrade the whole quality of life in the country.
We do not yet know the full consequences of repeated exposure to sonic booms. Tests made in Southern California and Oklahoma City, as well as in France, although incomplete and of uncertain validity, indicate that about 30 percent of the people questioned would consider the noise created by anticipated SST operations to be "intolerable" or "unacceptable"; another 50 percent would find it "objectionable."
The hazards anticipated from repeated exposure to sonic booms and other kinds of noise are subtle and altogether unnerving. They stem not only from the physiological and psychological effects of noise, but also from the accompanying vibrations. Taken together, these can range all the way from destroying sleep, impairing hearing, and endangering a surgeon's skill, to breaking thin-skinned bird eggs and destroying archaeological treasures.
Many of these effects are associated with the generalized noise to which we already are increasingly exposed. Persons repeatedly subjected to high noise levels—for example, pneumatic riveters or those working in boiler shops—eventually suffer from impaired hearing. Sudden shock noises can be psychologically upsetting. Local politicians in virtually all metropolitan areas report that they receive more complaints from people disturbed by noise than from people disturbed by any other kind of environmental pollution.
The first major decision we face concerns the SST, but responses to other forms of "noise pollution" are already occurring. During 1968, several bills were introduced into Congress to establish noise standards, encourage research, offer grants and technical aid, or otherwise assist in reducing the hazard of noise. And, in addition to the Interior report on the sonic boom, another report dealing with the growing problem of noise pollution was published. Prepared under the direction of the Federal Council for Science and Technology, Noise—Sound Without Value was released by the President in November. A Citizens' League against the sonic boom has been organized.
Manufacturers, under pressure from public opinion and guided by laws establishing controls, undoubtedly will continue a vigorous search to find ways of suppressing noise or designing around it. Many local governments have anti-noise ordinances, but these are concerned primarily with localized and conventional kinds of noise; it remains largely for the future to see whether metropolitan areas can get together on ordinances to deal with more, generalized noise. Many believe that the constitutional basis for dealing with the problem legally will prove inadequate; that the police powers in the interests of health, safety, and general welfare may not be specific enough where damage is of a psychological or aesthetic character.
If the approach now being pursued in dealing with water and air pollution should be followed (i.e. federal laws requiring states to set standards which are then applied and policed at the local level), one would expect a large share of the cost to be borne by the federal government in the form of loans, grants, and technical aid to those jurisdictions participating in the program. The more generalized the noise—as with the sonic boom—the more necessary it seems that the approach should be a national one.
A group of bioengineering experts at the Carnegie Mellon university, with the aid of a grant from Resources for the Future, is tackling the noise phenomenon in its modern setting. The problem is viewed as one of systems analysis, in which alternative program objectives are stated in terms of intensities and other characteristics of noise, and then a variety of control measures are considered in order to determine the least costly ways of achieving particular noise level objectives. The variety and kinds of noises, the geographic areas that are logical to consider in connection with each type of noise, the difficulties of allocating the benefits of noise reduction, and the costs of noise to industries, groups of people, and individuals pose exceedingly complicated problems. It is quite likely that wholly new laws and institutions will have to be devised to put into effect the most efficient control programs, once these have been determined.
