Paradoxically, industry organizes and supports its own noise abatement organizations. While these are helping to create an awareness of noise, they are also used to promote the best interests of the noisemaker, or to promote a market for noise-control products. For example, in the 1940s companies manufacturing acoustic tile formed the National Noise Abatement Council. It was the NNAC that consistently rated Memphis, Tennessee, as the quietest city in the United States because it enforced its horn blowing and muffler laws. When the use of acoustic tile became a commonplace, the Acoustical Materials Association withdrew its support and the organization collapsed in 1960.
In 1959 the aviation industry organized the National Aviation Noise Abatement Council (NANAC), composed of the nation's airport operators, pilots, airlines, and manufacturers of engines and airframes. In 1968 the airport operators withdrew from NANAC, denouncing the airlines and aircraft manufacturers for laying "a smokescreen over the problem of jet noise." The Air Line Pilots Association subsequently withdrew financial support because it felt the burden of jet noise reduction was being placed not on quieting the source but on peripheral procedures such as flight operation maneuvers.
The newest industry-oriented group is the National Council on Noise Abatement. Organized in 1968, its advisory committee lists such vested interests as U.S. Steel, International Paper Company, and the Cuna Mutual Insurance Society. Its purpose is to provide a forum for the exchange of information about industrial noise, and noise made by products manufactured in these plants. One of its functions appears to be to serve as a watchdog to alert industry to undesirable government regulations.
Inadvertently or otherwise, industry has succeeded in scuttling what should have been a natural move toward the development of quieter machines and dwelling places.