Preserving the environment

Recently more and more attention has been focused on the problem of preserving the environment. Over the past few decades or so the quality of many people’s lives has deteriorated in some respects because of technological progress. Those people living near airports are constantly attacked by noise of increasingly larger and more powerful jet aircraft taking off and landing. We have ugly buildings which have appeared in towns and cities. Some of these are blocks of flats-high-rise buildings built because of the high price of land.

The motor car has been responsible for many changes in the environment. On the one hand it has brought mobility of millions of people but on the other it has led to the construction of more and more noisy and dangerous roads and has polluted

the atmosphere with exhaust fumes.

While towns and cities have become larger and uglier and more densely populated, the rural areas have lost most of their population owing to the need for fewer workers in agriculture. The countryside has also been affected by the large-scale use of insecticides. For one thing the killing insects has resulted in a loss of balance in the ecology. Insects provide food for birds. Many people are afraid that fruit and vegetables sprayed with chemicals may have some poisonous effect upon the people who eat them.

Recently, however, certain counter measures against the destruction of the environment have been introduced. One of the first acts of Parliament to counter pollution was the Clean Air Act, which opened the way to smokeless zones in large towns and cities. This followed a very bad winter in which many people with bronchial complaints became very ill or died through the effects of a mixture of smoke, fog and fumes known as “smog”. Rivers which are fouled up with industrial chemical waste are now being cleaned, and fish which could not live there a few years ago can be caught again.

Noise pollution

People everywhere have become aware of a new kind of pollution – noise pollution. The problem has been brought into sharp focus by the discovery that many teenagers have suffered permanent hearing loss following long exposures to amplified rock music, and by public concern about the effects of sonic booms that would be caused by supersonic transports (SST) if they were put into commercial service.

Noise is usually measured in decibels. A tenfold increase in the strength of sound adds 10 units on the decibel scale, a 100-fold increase adds 20. The human threshold of hearing is represented by zero decibels.

Even a brief exposure to intense noise can cause temporary loss of hearing acuity. Permanent loss of hearing follows chronic exposure to high noise levels. Noise levels as low as 50-55 decibels may delay or interfere with sleep and result in a feeling of fatigue on awakening. There has been growing evidence that noise in the 90-decibel range may cause irreversible changes in the nervous system. These forms of damage, including permanent hearing loss such as that suffered by fans of rock music, can occur at noise level well below those that are painful. Noise may be a factor in many stress-related diseases, such as peptic ulcer (язва желудка) and hypertension, although present evidence is only circumstantial. In any case noise pollution is clearly a growing threat to our health and happiness.

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