The case for recognizing noise as a health problem may be summarized as follows:
Man is being exposed to increasing amounts of a new and potent mix of stresses—chemical, physical, and psychological.
Noise, at even moderate levels, forces a systemic response from the total organism. It is not only the sense of hearing that is involved. What is also involved is what happens after the brain receives the sound signal. The brain places the body on a war footing. The repetition of these alerts is exhausting. It depletes energy levels; it can cause changes in the chemistry of the blood, in the volume of the blood circulation; it places a strain on the heart; it prevents restorative sleep and rest; it hinders convalescence; it can be a form of torture. It can so weaken the body's defense mechanisms that diseases can more readily take hold. The organism does not adapt to noise; it becomes enured and pays a price. The price of this "adaptation" is in itself a hazard to health.
The effect of noise on health may—like radiation poisoning—be something that will show no clinically significant symptoms at the time of exposure or shortly thereafter. Conclusions must not be drawn from short-term observations. Nobody, even today, knows too much about how air pollution affects people. Doctors back in the 1920's were concerned about smoking as a health hazard, but it was not until recent years that medical science was able to establish a link between smoking and health. The same lag applies to noise. Some doctors and scientists have long suspected that noise is inflicting damage, but the nature of that damage is yet to be discovered.
The most constructive medical and commonsense position is the one taken by Jansen:
Any sound or noise may change physiological states; and until someone will prove that these more or less repeated changes are negligible we must consider noise to have a possible detrimental influence on human health.
Noise per se may not be dangerous. But when noise becomes immoderate, as with anything else in life, it loses its innocence. It also loses its innocence when it strikes at those whose constitutions are weakened by ill health or old age. Noise may yet prove to be as deadly a threat to man as the noxious fumes about which we are presently hearing so much.