Many people in industry an 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 of that noise affects people. On he 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 food cause, and it is likely to be discredited
if ti gets to be associated with bad science.
One allegation often made is that noise product 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 the another victim, reduced to a screaming
wreck'. On turning eagerly to the text, one learns that the lady was a typist who found 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 the 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 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 dose not prove that it does not exist; but is does mean that noise is
less dangerous than, say, being brought up in anphanage-which really is a mental health hazard