Many people in industry and the Services, who have practical experience of
noise, regard any investigation of this question as a waste of time; they are
not prepared even to admit the possibility that noise affects people. On the
other hand, those who dislike noise will sometimes use most inadequate
evidence to support their pleas for a quieter society. This is a pity, because
noise abatement really is a good cause, and it is likely to be discredited if
it gets to be associated with bad science.#
One allegation often made is that noise produces mental illness. A recent
article in a weekly newspaper, for instance, was headed with a striking
illustration of a lady in a state of considerable distress, with the caption
'She was yet another victim, reduced to a screaming wreck'. On turning eagerly
to the text, one learns that the lady was a typist who found the sound of
office typewriters worried her more and more until eventually she had to go
into a mental hospital. Now the snag in this sort of anecdote is of course
that one cannot distinguish cause and effect. Was the noise a cause of the
illness, or were the complaints about noise merely a symptom? Another patient
might equally well complain that her neighbours were combining to slander her
and persecute her, and yet one might be cautious about believing this
statement.#
What is needed in case of noise is a study of large numbers of people living
under noisy conditions, to discover whether they are mentally ill more often
than other people are. Some time ago the United States Navy, for instance,
examined a very large number of men working on aircraft carriers: the study
was known as Project Anehin. It can be unpleasant to live even several miles
from an aerodrome; if you think what it must be like to share the deck of a
ship with several squadrons of jet aircraft, you will realize that a modern
navy is a good place to study noise. But neither psychiatric interviews nor
objective tests were able to show any effects upon these American sailors.
This result merely confirms earlier American and British studies: if there is
any effect of noise upon mental health, it must be so small that present
methods of psychiatric diagnosis cannot find it. That does not prove that it
does exist: but it does mean that noise is less dangerous than, say, being
brought up in an orphanage - which really is mental health hazard.&