Unfortunately, in the rare cases when a law is enacted that sets a maximum limit on noise, it refers back to these regressive industry standards. For example, the first state law setting a maximum decibel limit for motor vehicles was enacted in 1965. Adopted by New York State, this law did not acknowledge the need for adequate quiet in the homes near the thruway, but recognized industry's 1954 vehicle noise standard. In other words, at a time when noise pollution is escalating, legal limits are dictated by conditions that may have existed a decade earlier. There is no pressure on the automobile industry to produce quieter vehicles.
The consumer suffers not only from a lack of standards—and noise rating systems—he is given strange information about the noise emissions from consumer products. Take air conditioners, especially the window units. One of the most common recommendations found in mass media articles is to fight noise by switching on "the calming sounds of your air conditioner." The fact is that the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers does not include window units in its decibel design guide—because they are too noisy. Insiders in the industry report to each other that though the public does not like the noise from air conditioners, it will tolerate that noise if it feels it is buying something inexpensive. To help the consumer tolerate that noise it is described as "acoustical perfume" desirable as masking for the street sounds of traffic. The latest development is to recommend air conditioner noise as a means of reducing the shock of aircraft flyovers! Small wonder that of more than 100 manufacturers of residential air conditioners, fewer than a dozen have acoustic facilities.
To forestall restrictive legislation, the industry, through its trade association, has developed its own "model" ordinance which it tries to sell to acoustically naive communities. Unnerved because Coral Gables, Florida, and Beverly Hills, California, adopted local laws calling for quiet air conditioning, the industry is now recommending that its dealers and distributors promote the model code drawn up by the American Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute. The editor of Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration News has said about this code:
Our industry's present recommended code suggests a 60-decibel level be permitted at the property line. In five years of actively monitoring the noise problem, I have yet to meet one person outside of our industry who does not consider 60 decibels an unreasonably permissive level...In Cincinnati, the code authorities openly laughed at our industry's 60-decibel recommendation...The industry's noise code is unrealistic.
There is no state or Federal agency in the United States to tell local civic leaders and city officials that the model code of the American Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute is a license to murder sleep.
The public could avoid buying excessively noisy air conditioners and appliances if it were afforded a noise rating system. Such ratings are available to military and industrial purchasing agents. One excuse the appliance industry gives for not noise-rating its consumer products is fear of a decibel war, in which one competitor will claim his product is one or two decibels quieter than those manufactured by the other guys, and consumers, presumably unaware that one decibel is not a significant difference, would favor that product. This argument must be taken with a grain of salt, if one observes the jargon about quiet in the promotion of today's noisy air conditioners. Apparently the industry would rather make it possible for all its members to exaggerate.