Get the doctors involved. Don't let them get away with the customary "take an aspirin."
It is high time that the otologists—who have borne the brunt of the work in occupational and military noise—be augmented by neurologists, endocrinologists, psychiatrists—the entire spectrum of medicine. We must learn more about the extra-auditory effects of noise. If the evidence is not conclusive for a relationship between noise and disease, the epidemiologists must determine whether there is a greater chance for an ulcer or a heart attack in a noise-stressed environment. To persist in ignoring the total systemic response to noxious sound energy is as foolishly restrictive as to see air pollution only in terms of its effect on visibility.
Medical schools and other research institutions must try to discover why the living organism is annoyed by noise, must explore the significance of the physiological changes. They should be trying to find out why one person is more disturbed than another. They should also try to discover if—for cultural and other reasons—only a minority will admit to noise disturbance.
If nothing else, ask your physician if the concept of preventive medicine does not warrant his interest in abatement. Ask him whether or not he has heard of doctors who find it difficult to use stethoscopes in today's noisy world. Ask if he himself needs the new anti-noise stethoscope. Tell your doctor that his colleagues complain about noise just as much as you do. If you have an ailment for which he has prescribed rest, tranquility, adequate sleep, ask him what drugstore can fill that prescription.
Enlist the support of the church and the synagogue. Organized religion can do more than tell its congregations that noise is cruel, that noise violates the dignity of man. The houses of worship can practice what they preach by themselves being good neighbors.
In 1966 the Department of Commerce estimated that $1,275,000 would be spent for religious buildings. Let the church or synagogue, in sending out construction bids, ask for quiet methods and materials, and award their bids to the contractor who offers to build quietly and for quiet. This action would hasten the end of the curse of construction noise. The religious institutions can ask their contractors and architects to install central air conditioning that is properly designed not to cause noise annoyance. And finally, they can check to make sure their chimes aren't a problem to the community.
End the alienation between the makers of things and the public that must live with them. It may be against the law for you to silence a noisemaker's machine; it is not against the law to talk to him about it.
Get to know the noisemaker and his experts. Make yourself and your neighbors visible to his distributors, his trade associations. Friendly intervisitation will create an image of the public as flesh and blood, and not stereotyped statistical abstractions.
What do you talk about at such meetings? Talk dollars and cents. Talk about noise-induced hearing loss and inefficiency, and ill-will. Offer incentives, and protection from unfair—that is, noisy—competition.
Explain to a contractor the hidden costs of potential workmen's compensation claims. Explain to a factory operator the possibilities of lowered productivity, higher accident rates. Explain to all noisemakers of commerce and industry the potential of lawsuits, not only for hearing loss, but for the destruction of environmental quality.
Be prepared to show evidence of a market for quieter products, and that you are urging private purchasers and city agencies to "buy quiet."
Offer an awards program that will engender goodwill for the provider of quiet.
With this type of rounded negotiations program, the dialogue between the public and the noisemaker can start on a basis of genuine desire for exploring mutual interests.
This dialogue is not meant to be a love-in. The noisemaker must be given to understand that you mean business—his business, if he does not respond. Use stockholder clout. Buy stock in corporations manufacturing noisy products. Encourage your friends to do the same. Then attend stockholders meetings and demand design for quiet. Conversely, refuse to own stock in companies that will not curb noise pollution.
Business thrives on competition, we are told. Stir up a little competition from less-polluting substitutes. It is not inconceivable that new space-age entrepreneurs will supplant the rigid old-guard that refuses to de-pollute its products.
Search the catalogues of foreign manufacturers, and encourage the importing of quieter products. Not until the discovery of quieter, competitively priced European construction equipment in 1966 were American manufacturers encouraged to lose their timidity and market some quiet products of their own.
More can be done than promoting the products of quiet design. Censure the noisy ones. Obtain the decibel readings of the noisy appliances and vehicles in your community, and publicize the results.
Economic pressure may encourage the American noisemaker to think of quiet as well as style. One method of protest is the boycott. Select one product that is noisier than others. If all products in that category are equally noisy, boycott all. This will entail sacrifice, but the noisemaker will not believe that noise is a bother until he sees evidence of some sacrifice in comfort, time or money. It should be possible to boycott one airline of several serving a given city. A leaf can be taken from the conservation movement: the Maine State Biologists Association conducted a national boycott of the products of a company accused of polluting a stream with its potato processing plant, according to The New York Times (April 6, 1969).