This belated interest in human needs is reaching the colleges and universities. There seems to be a growing awareness that engineers need an education and not merely engineering training. As president of Rose Polytechnic Institute, Dr. John A. Logan called for a new kind of engineering education that would develop specialists concerned about the use of science and technology for the well-being of man. He believes that engineers must be taught how to use the humanities to make the world a more pleasant place in which to live. To this far-seeing educator, comfort and aesthetics are just as important factors in environmental health as disease control.
As the number of farmers decreases, the agricultural colleges are seeking legitimate new directions. They are concerned with developing nutrition and home economics programs that can be applied to the urban low-income groups. They are concerned with air pollution. There is no reason why extension divisions of agricultural colleges could not move on noise control. Rutgers University's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, in sponsoring noise pollution symposia, has already begun to move in this direction.
Signs of a people-and-environment interest are beginning to appear in the practice of medicine and in other professions. In 1969, McGraw-Hill's Medical World News began a series on man's threatened environment with a story on noise reporting that physicians "are increasingly alarmed" at the continuous exposure of human beings to today's everyday noises.
The American Public Health Association is slowly responding to pressure to recognize that noise is a health issue. It is encouraging that not only did the American Public Health Association invite me to present a paper critical of its neglect, but it subsequently published "Noise and Urban Man" in its Journal. In a recent revision of its principles for housing design, proper noise insulation within dwellings was described as essential to health. It was also recommended that homes containing children and the aged should be protected from the noises of busy highways.
Some members of the legal profession are recognizing the need to protect man in the reasonable enjoyment of his property, and that to meet this need the excesses of technology must be curbed. On August 3, 1968, the Saturday Review devoted a section to the question: Can the law relate to the physical and life sciences in a manner that will protect not only the human body but human dignity? Its contributors answered in the affirmative, and saw the lawyer of the future, given the proper social orientation, as one who could help oversee the technical experts who now dominate the decisionmaking process.
It is encouraging to hear the outspoken contention of European practicing and teaching lawyers that the role of law is to protect man from the machine, and not the reverse. Zurich seems to be a center for this humanist thinking, and men like Dr. Schenker-Sprungli, Professor M. Keller, and Professor K. Oftinger take the position that the law must set limits to technology: that the purpose of law is to enforce moral values. "The right to live undisturbed is a fundamental right of the individual rooted in the law," says Schenker-Sprungli. These men raise the question of the legality of invading the privacy of the home with disturbing sonic booms.
American conservationists are developing a legal attack on environmental pollution. The Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference fought to keep Con Edison from constructing a facility on Storm King Mountain that would have caused thermal pollution of the Hudson River. The Environmental Defense Fund fights in the courts to stop the indiscriminate use of DDT. The Conservation Foundation is developing a modus operandi for a legal defense of the environment. CQC is encouraging law students and young practicing lawyers to explore legal attacks on noisemaking. In time society will see there is not too much difference between poisoning fish and animal life with DDT and poisoning man with dB(A).
One of the four points of the "conservation bill of rights" includes reduction of excessive noise. New York State voters were given the opportunity to vote on this amendment to their constitution on November 3, 1969, and they approved it. A similar amendment has been proposed for the Federal Constitution. Once enacted, such amendments serve as a prod to make legislators enact implementing statutes.
If the conservationists win, cities, too, may become quieter. Any machine that must be muffled in the natural environment will eventually keep its muffler on in the urban environment.
There is evidence American architects are beginning to recognize the public has ears. Architect Samuel Paul dedicated his book Apartments, Their Design and Development to "People." Published in 1967, this book contained a chapter on sound control written by his son David J. Paul, who foresees the day when sound control treatment will be standard practice in all apartment construction.
The New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects has initiated an annual environmental awards program to encourage design to make the city more livable. In January 1969 it awarded CQC a citation "For their acute awareness in advocating noise abatement."
One of Expo 67's major exhibits was Habitat, a new concept in dwellings that featured acoustic as well as visual privacy.
Foreign architects seem to be more active in promoting protection from noise than American architects. Canada's Royal Architectural Institute has called upon architects to design enclosed spaces not only to protect workers from hearing loss, but to save the general population from noise-induced tension and fatigue. Nothing in the United States has matched the memorandum submitted in 1960 to the Wilson Committee by the Royal Institute of British Architects. This group pointed out that they cannot control the environment in which their designed buildings are to be located, and that government has a patent responsibility for environmental control.
The memorandum also took to task the aviation ministry's favorable report on heliports in the London area. Unlike their American counterparts who are still unaware of what center-city aviation means, these architects made it clear that helicopters in Central London would mean "that the whole of Central London...will be subjected to noise levels equivalent to those on the pavements of Oxford Street; in the neighborhood of the helicopter station they will, of course, be very much higher...We are greatly perturbed at the loss of a sense of social values it betokens." The Institute recommended rapid surface or underground transportation to the airports, and protection of residential areas from heavy traffic.
It was also recommended that the building construction industries set up a development program for quieter methods of operation. The key to the problem of industrial noise, the Institute pointed out, is in the hands of machinery designers.
Other recommendations included compulsory noise rating for machinery, the conversion into law of recommended sound insulation standards in buildings, and the development of a method whereby the people who create noise, not their victims, should be made responsible for spending money to control it.
This type of memorandum not only clarifies the issues for government, but gives the public a valuable base for its noise abatement efforts.