The Consequences of Airport Noise

Is this country run by people with no sense of balance? Can they stop their rush to come up with ever more stupifying megaprojects long enough to consider the problems and inadequacies of those already started?

2500 years ago Protagoras stated a criterion for all undertakings:

MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS

NOT: Super, Mega, Biggest, Greatest; Best, yes, but not as they think it means

Airport noise to cost us Bt2 bn’
Nation Newspaper: Published on Nov 29, 2005

The head of a college close to the new airport said yesterday it would cost around Bt2 billion to make its buildings noise-proof. Rector Kitti Teeraset said the cost would cover the installation of devices to block out noise in all 44 buildings at the King Mongkut Institute of Technology’s Lat Krabang campus to protect students from the sound of aircraft taking off and landing at Suvarnabhumi Airport. The money would be spent on double-layered windows and walls, and noise-absorbing material, he said, at a seminar yesterday.
A group of students said their class had to be abandoned on September 29, when the first aircraft landed at the airport in a test landing. The group said they thought noise levels would certainly affect them on certain courses when studies needed to be done outside.

Big Noise

What do you call important people? In Thailand we call them Phu Yai - A Big Person. And such is the respect for class structure that there is no hint of derision about the title of Phu Yai. In other cultures it is not so. During the second world war when shortage of fuel forced even very important persons to share egalitarian travel by train with the hoi polloi, in a country also noted for an adherence to class status, seats were reserved for them with a card printed VIP - very important person! But the seeds of disrespect had long been sown among the less worthy and the intended meaning of the title was reversed by referring to VIPs as SPIVS or idle pretenders.
Big Boss is a rather neutral title for the very important but it can carry ironic tones. Fat Cat is certainly dismissive. But the title which I want to recall is "Big Noise", possibly a relative of a "Big Shot". Here the derision is more subtle, the Big Noises require noise to draw attention to their status. The noise could be real enough, Big Noises spoke more loudly than others and their approach was announced by a swell of admiring comment. "Big Noise" also referred to the fact that much noise, i.e. comment and gossip followed their doings. I think the term came first from the Chinese custom of banging gongs to announce the passage of a Big Noise being carried in a palanquin. In other cultures the passage of a Big Noise was also broadcast by noise, the playing of musical instruments where volume rather than melody revealed the intent.
The curious lack of a single word for noise in Thai protects Thai culture from such implied lack of respect for a Big Noise.

Noisiest Shop

The noisiest shops in Bangkok shopping centres are those selling CDs! And the noisiest shops selling CDs are the various branches of Mangpong! Does the volume of their sales really depend on the volume of noise they generate?
One morning I asked a shop attendant next door to a Mangpong branch whether she did not find the noise insufferable. She replied that it was even worse in the afternoons!
Yesterday I told one of the staff in Mangpong that the sound was too high, he agreed, and told me that when he returned home in the evenings his ears continued to ring with the noise. In fact this is a serious abuse of young workers who are therebye more vulnerable. The noise level often exceeds 85 decibels where hearing damage can occur, and the young workers probably work in such an environment for up to 10 hours a day. The 90 db level set as a safety level in the work place in Thai law is not adequate to give protection against the continuous level of noise to which staff in video shops are exposed.

As Loud As It Gets

In early November a cruise ship, Seaborn Spirit, was attacked by machine gun armed pirates in motor boats off the coast of Somalia. Early reports ascribed the escape of Seaborn Spirit to its ability to outspeed the pirates. However, an article in the German magazine Spiegel of November 15th reveals that the pirates were disabled by a newly developed sonic weapon that emits earsplitting noise.
"Until now, it wasn't widely known that the US Defense Department was sharing the so-called Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) with commercial cruise ships. The weapon is essentially a small dish that beams hellishly loud noise that is deafening but not lethal. Weighing 20 kilograms and as big as a TV satellite dish, the device looks deceptively harmless. But once trained on its target, it blasts a tight beam of painful siren-like sound.It's not known how the grinning pirates 160 kilometers off the coast of the Horn of Africa reacted as they suddenly were hit by the LRAD. But they were close, and the closer one is to the sonic cannon, the worse the effect is. It's possible they received permanent hearing damage, but at the very least they experienced an excruciating headache and ear pain to the point that they could no longer see or hear. They also quickly lost the desire to board the ship."
The weapon, it appears, can deliver 150 decibels of pure noise.

Things that Go Bump in the Night

"From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggaty beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!"

It is three o'clock in the morning and all is quiet. How quiet? Well, my sound level meter says 33.2 decibels. It is generally agreed that a level of 35 decibels is appropriate for sound sleep so I have a decibel or two to spare. At the beginning the noise level was 35 decibels. By careful listening I could detect that the flourescent lighting was emitting a light hum, then the fan of my computer was making a sound so low that I am rarely aware of it. By shutting off these two I achieved the lowest level. In the distance there is the faint sound of a barking dog. There are the inevitable tiny squeeks of a house adjusting to temperature change. If I move in my chair the slight sound sends the decibel level above 35 decibels again.
Where do the remaining 33 decibels come from? It is the sound of this huge city breathing as it sleeps, a mixture of sounds that is below my present threshold of hearing. In the countryside, on a mountain top, or in a specially constructed sound proof room one could achieve more quiet sorroundings.
But it is quiet enough, and soon I will return to sleep!

Noisy Bangkok

The title of this site is Quiet Bangkok. In fact the subject it treats of is Noisy Bangkok. Or rather Noisy ---------, the blank is almost any city you care to mention: Noisy Manila, Noisy Jakarta, Noisy Ho Chi Min City to mention only cities most comparable to Bangkok. To generalize, the subject is Urban Noise.

Urban noise: Noise emitted from various sources in an urban environment

“Our urban environment is crowded, busy-and noisy! Jackhammers pounding, sirens whining, alarms ringing, subway trains screeching, aircraft zooming overhead, car horns honking - these are but a few of the annoying and potentially hazardous sounds to which city dwellers are almost constantly exposed to.”

“Urban dwellers are besieged by noise, not only in the city’s streets, but also in its busy workplaces and many noisy leisure activities. Tests conducted in the city of Toronto by The Canadian Hearing Society in co-operation with The Toronto Star newspaper suggest that anyone working or living in the city is continually subjected to noise loud enough to be annoying and likely to cause long-term, irreversible hearing loss. A Star reporter and CHS audiologist used a hand-held noise meter and wore computerized noise meters which registered all the sounds that they encountered during two days: the average sound level was almost 77 decibels. They also found sound levels of 100 decibels near construction equipment or when trucks drove by; 81 decibels in a downtown clothing store, the equivalent noisy traffic; 89 decibels in a downtown pub; 97 decibels from car horns. The World Health Organization proposes that "there is no identifiable risk of hearing damage in noise levels of less than 75 decibels" (for an exposure of 8 hours), but "for higher levels, there is an increasing predictable risk." “

Urban sprawl results in more traffic; the year 2010 is expected to have an increase of traffic of 40% above 1990 levels, limited only by traffic saturation such as can be experienced on Bangkok streets any evening of the week. Modifications to the noise levels emitted by cars are expected to take up to 15 years to show an effect.

The Bozzetto noise cartoon referred to in the following post has a tragic outcome. The cause is not the individual noise sources which drive the cartoon characters to frenzy but rather the background noise symbolized by airplanes of which they are no longer even aware.

What to do? You tell me!

The Noise of Bruno Bozzetto

Quiet Bangkokian wildly acclaims and recommends the noise cartoon of Bruno Bozzetto which may be accessed in the side panel link 'Noise Cartoon'
Enjoy more of Bozzetto's work on his website www.Bozzetto.com

Pascal: Philosophy of Quiet

Pascal said that all human misery comes from a single thing, which is not knowing enough to stay quietly in your room

Trees versus Noise

ต้นไม้ที่ปลูกแทนรั้ว เป็นกำแพงกันเสียง กันฝุ่นได้ดี ตัดแต่งง่าย เป็นระเบียบ คือ อโศกอินเดีย
อโศกอินเดีย เป็นไม้ที่มีถิ่นกำเนิดจากประเทศอินเดีย และศรีลังกา มีความสูงถึงยี่สิบห้าเมตร เรือนยอดเป็นรูปสามเหลี่ยมแคบคล้ายปิรามิด ไม่ผลัดใบ ใบเป็นรูปหอกยาวประมาณ 15-20 ซม. ริมขอบหยัก สีเขียวเข้มเป็นมัน ลำต้นเกลี้ยงสีน้ำตาลอ่อน ออกดอกในระหว่างเดือน มี.ค. - เม.ย. เป็นกระจุกตามข้างๆ กิ่ง สีเขียวอมเหลือง แต่ละดอกเป็นรูปดาว 6 แฉก กลีบดอกเป็นคลื่นน้อยๆ ขนาดเส้นผ่านศูนย์กลาง 1.5-2 เซนติเมตร ดอกบานอยู่นานสามสัปดาห์ ผลเป็นพวงสีเขียวรูปไข่ เมื่อสุกกลายเป็นสีดำ ขยายพันธุ์ด้วยเมล็ดและตอนกิ่ง

เป็นไม้ที่หาซื้อง่าย มีขายตั้งแต่ต้นเล็กประมาณหนึ่งฟุตถึงหนึ่งเมตร ราคาสี่สิบถึงร้อยยี่สิบบาท ปลูกห่างกันระยะหนึ่งเมตร หากแดดฝนดี ก็จะโตไว สูงชะลูด เป็นกำแพงแทนรั้วบ้าน ภายในห้าปี ก็โตหลายเมตร ช่วยลดความกระด้างของสิเมนต์ ลดเสียงรถยนต์ที่ถนนข้างนอกได้ หากเพื่อนบ้านเลี้ยงสุนัข และส่งเสียงเห่ารบกวน กำแพงต้นอโศกอินเดีย จะช่วยให้คุณไม่ต้องประสานตากับเพื่อนบ้านหรือสุนัขของเขา ทำให้คลายความขุ่นมัวลงได้มาก

ชื่อพื้นเมือง อโศกอินเดีย อโศกเซนคาเบรียล
ชื่อสามัญ The Mast Tree , Cemetery Tree