Bangkok Post today - 29/9/2013
EDITORIAL
Turn down the volume before it's too late
- Published: 29/09/2013 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: News
Fed up with the noise pollution making life a misery in
his Pattaya home and despairing of finding tranquility elsewhere in Thailand, a
stressed-out writer recently jetted off to Myanmar in search of peace and
quiet.
He made it to the secluded Chaungtha Beach near Yangon and settled in just
ahead of the weekend exodus from the former capital.Along came a convoy of SUVs and tour buses. The new arrivals erected giant speakers and a powerful sound system nearby, cranked up a noisy generator and a beachside karaoke session was under way.
He returned to Thailand convinced that whatever else Myanmar might be, it is not the promised land as far as stress relief is concerned.
The same could be said of China, Cambodia, India or a score of other countries, because no matter how enticing the marketing hype, rarely is the proverbial grass greener on the other side of the hill, especially if that hill is in Asia. For this is a continent where cities thrive on noise, and nowhere is this more evident than in Bangkok.
Despite its high decibel level, the capital is consistently voted one of the most vibrant and exciting cities in the world. Although that puts the battle waged against the pervasive culture of noise in a more positive light, it is questionable whether the judges actually live here.
If so, they cannot have failed to notice that the racket that envelops every shopping mall, children's playground, hospital waiting area, street, bus or train station often reaches dangerous levels.
Some people are just not happy unless they are flooded with competing sources of noise.
This even extends to public parks, where blaring loudspeakers disrupt attempts to seek solitude and refuge.
The loss of serenity and tranquility is not limited to Bangkok. Once-peaceful provinces have had their calm shattered by deafening speaker arrays perched on temples and through loudspeakers on poles which blast rural folk with news, irrelevant announcements and music from dawn to dusk.
Even a boat trip down a countryside khlong can mean a headache brought on by the din of unmuffled engines.
But it may not always be this way. In the wake of a 2004 birthday speech by His Majesty the King, in which he lamented the fact that some people were having their ability to listen ruined by loud music, several groups sprang up determined to turn down Bangkok's volume and city officials busied themselves raiding noisy nightclubs.
That was followed by a revolt from skytrain commuters. Already irritated at being bombarded by screeching audio-visual advertisements from TV monitors on previously peaceful BTS station platforms, they were incensed when these were extended to inside the trains as well.
They saw themselves as a captive audience persecuted by noise pollution of the most intrusive kind.
The enthusiastic response from the travelling public to a petition-signing campaign suggested that many other commuters also felt they had paid their fare to use the BTS, not to be persecuted by noisy ads.
In the end the sheer convenience of the skytrain won out, the protest fizzled and the noisy video displays remained. While Japan might have banned the use of mobile phones and other noisy distractions on its trains because the cacophony annoyed commuters, the clear message being sent was that this would not happen here.
But the failed attempt to pacify the skytrain did turn out to be a catalyst for other anti-noise campaigns. Loud videos mixed with ads and shown to captive passengers on tour buses were targeted, as well as ads that were blasted at passengers on newer city buses, vendors advertising their goods on sale at high volume and department stores that had installed special video displays that detonated a burst of sound and vision whenever a potential customer walked past.
With the average noise level in Bangkok measured at 84dB, against the accepted safe level of 70dB, it is little wonder that a survey by the World Health Organisation several years ago found that more than 20% of the capital's population who lived alongside roads suffered from ''sensory neural hearing loss''.
Loud noise is recognised both as a form of psychological torture and a major symptom of a consumer society obsessed by materialism.
Municipal ordinances controlling noise pollution exist in Bangkok and throughout the world. The difference lies in enforcement. It is time we put the health of our nation before the interests of those inconsiderate and selfish people who exhaust our patience and exploit our tolerance.
posted by hrdefender at 3:06 pm
