Since noise has been shown to be one cause of hearing loss, some of the money spent on hearing aids must be charged to noise. It has been estimated that between 10 and 15 million Americans need hearing aids for their various types of hearing loss. The Hearing Aid Industry Conference estimates that more than a million and a half Americans do wear hearing aids. The World Health Organization reports that the actual hearing-aid rate in urban areas is estimated to be around 6.8 per 1,000 population, rising from 1.3 per 1,000 persons under 45 years of age to 72.6 per 1,000 persons for those aged 75 and over.
Hearing aids sell for from as little as $75 to as much as $500 for a binaural (two-ear) set. It is impossible to compute what share of this market can be credited to noise, but if six to sixteen million American workers are already deafened, and city noise damages hearing, noise is a good salesman.
Though nothing is known about how many people enter hospitals because of noise-induced illness, the Public Health Service has something to say about the cost of noise once the patient is hospitalized. A PHS report justified expenditures for noise control by informing hospital planners that "added days of hospital care, extended convalescence, or incomplete recovery may resuit from patient's insufficient bed rest. Moreover, the monetary loss to the community and to the individual in terms of lost working days from long hospitalization is a further reason for providing quieter hospital conditions." In other words, expensive hospital stays may be prolonged by noise.
Noise drives one to escape as much as possible. Few of us think of the cost of escape from noise. To economist Sylvia Porter, that house in the country is no longer a luxury for city man, but necessary for his survival. Publishers Weekly describes the conscientious editor as one who has "probably sunk his meager present and future earnings into a quiet little place in the country, where he can work in peace."
Those who cannot afford the outlay for that country house must pay heavily for periodic escapes. This price goes up as the nearby havens of quiet disappear and only distance offers the hope of fewer decibels. "Refugees from noise," writes Homer Bigart in The New York Times, "now have somewhere to go." That "somewhere" is the hotels Laurance Rockefeller has developed in the West Indies and Hawaii, resorts that "woo peace, privacy, and tranquility. None is readily accessible to a city. The poor man is left with ear plugs."
For those who cannot afford the actual sounds of nature, there are the synthetic "white noise" devices. At a cost of $11.50 you can listen to a recording of something that is supposed to lull like the "swooshing pine-woods winds." For $69.95 you will get, it is claimed, the magic sound of the sea.