At certain intense levels small animals have been killed by noise exposure. The original rat-killing cum intense sound experiment was performed in a laboratory with a special sound generator. However, Albert Hoeffleur, a Swiss delegate to the 1966 AICB congress, told me he had witnessed the killing of a rat by noise in a real-life situation. The rodent was held in the stream of a jet engine. In fifteen minutes the animal was dead.
The intense sound energy was trapped in the furry hide, and cooked the animal to death. Which should be of some consolation to bald-headed men. Except that though the lethal exposure for man is greater than that for small animals, 150-160 decibels can destroy hearing.
In another animal experiment, rats were exposed to an air blast for from five to ten minutes a day, every weekday for from 15½ weeks to 124 weeks. Almost all showed dilated pupils and increased frequency of urination and defecation. Another reaction observed was a frenzied running attack in which the rat ran and leaped rapidly about the pen. In most cases this attack was ended by a series of convulsions and a final 3-5 minute state of tonic rigidity often so marked that the extremities "were able to be molded into bizarre positions." In most cases, rats did not die after these attacks. According to the February 1945 American Journal of Physiology, they only suffered.
Granted these are animal experiments. But we cannot ignore the report of human beings who worked in the close vicinity of high-performance jet engines during development and maintenance periods. These men were said to have developed diarrhea, nausea, giddiness, and in extreme cases if the exposure was prolonged, spontaneous pneumothorax. At first food poisoning was suspected, since the engineers involved were wearing protective earmuffs. The cause apparently was the intense sound energy which penetrated their skulls and torsos. True, these are intense noises, but without any effective anti-noise restrictions, there is nothing to protect the people who work in proximity to jet development.