Photo Gallery Assaulted by Sound
More and more Germans are getting fed up with increased levels of noise pollution in Germany. Sandra Pohl, 43, lives near train tracks in the western German town of Lorchhausen. Some 160 trains rumble past her home every day on their journey through the Rhine Valley. She has joined a citizens' initiative to protest the noise, which she fears will adversely affect her health and that of her two children in the long run.
For almost two years now, hundreds of local residents have gathered weekly in the departure hall of Frankfurt Airport, the country's busiest air hub, to protest the noise resulting from the airport's new runway. Citizens are also staging frequent protests against aircraft noise in Berlin (such as the one seen here), Cologne and Leipzig, as well as along the approach path to the Zurich Airport, in Switzerland.
Demonstrators outside Berlin's Tegel Airport: It isn't just airplane and train noise that has residents up in arms. Many are upset about expanding highways and increased street noise, as well.
"Noise is the most heavily underestimated environmental problem in Germany," says Jochen Flasbarth, president of the Federal Environmental Agency (UBA). In a representative survey conducted by the agency in 2010, half of all respondents complained about road noise while one in three objected to aircraft noise.
Experts and doctors overwhelmingly agree that long-term exposure to noise can cause serious and even life-threatening illnesses. But they are still at odds over the questions of how much noise is harmful and what the consequences are. Some studies and scenarios make dire predictions. The UBA, for example, estimates that traffic noise triggers some 4,000 heart attacks in Germany each year.
A Tornado fighter jet: Living with this much noise isn't just annoying; as numerous scientific studies have shown, it's also very unhealthy. For example, it increases the risk of heart attacks, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular illnesses.
In their campaign platforms for the recent national election, all parties with seats in the parliament, the Bundestag, called for less noise. But in most cases they merely followed up this demand with non-specific announcements and promises that things would improve in the distant future. According to official readings, the trains in the Rhine Valley generate noise levels of up to 110 decibels. This corresponds to the amount of noise made by a chainsaw being operated at full power heard from a distance of one meter (3.3 feet).
Researchers in Mainz conducted a study on noise exposure that found that nighttime traffic noise raises blood pressure, causes the release of stress hormones, such as adrenalin, and stiffens blood vessels. They were especially alarmed by the fact that they were unable to discern any adaptation effects even after the noise exposure procedure was repeated several times. "Blood pressure rises regardless of whether you wake up from the noise or not," says cardiologist Thomas Münzel.
Current laws and regulations on noise mitigation are "incapable of effectively protecting the population," the German Medical Association concluded in 2012. The World Health Organization also believes that the German threshold values are much too high. As long ago as 1999, the WHO recommended that traffic in residential areas not be allowed to produce noise at levels higher than 45 decibels, and that no more than 30 decibels should penetrate into houses and apartments.
