Fight against noise

By Jimena de Gortari

Have you been woken up by a passing airplane? Have you had to pause a conversation because of a passing motorcycle? Have you had a headache after living with a construction site? Have you been thrown out of focus by the hum of the machine room in the courtyard behind your office?  

All these sound sources are present in our daily lives, day and night. One on top of the other, discontinuous and interrupting the activities we carry out, even while we sleep. When the sound emitted is unwanted and unpleasant, what we call noise appears. One of the enormous complexities of this phenomenon is that it is considered a matter of appreciation. Thus it is considered as a sound that I do not like, something that bothers me to hear, something that interrupts what I am doing. Noise is a pollutant and its impact on our well-being is related to its intensity (measured in decibels (dB)) and the time we are exposed to it.