The sound of the penny dropping was so loud it hurt. This was upon learning how noise knackers you, mentally and physically. Charlotte Clark, a professor of environmental epidemiology, didn’t put it quite like that, but I heard her loud and clear. She points out that our emotional response to sound is an aspect of our fight-or-flight response, evolved to get us up to speed when danger announces itself. A big noise equals big danger, possibly.
Back in the day I suppose this might have amounted to a lion roaring, or an angry neighbour clubbing the door to your cave, swearing vengeance about nicking his kindling or something. I can’t think of many other loud noises our ancestors would have had to endure. Thunder must have scared the bejesus out of them – but otherwise, when it came to noise, I think they had it rather easy.
I’d like to see them give modern life a try. The noise, the sheer racket, the crashes, bangs and wallops, the engines, the yelling, the bings and bongs of phone alerts. Oh, we’re alert, all right – don’t worry about that. We are all, as my Jewish friends might put it, on shpilkes. On shpilkes all day, every day.
And no wonder, because into our ears all these cursed sounds go, torrents of them rushing into our amygdalas, the bit of our brains responsible for deciding whether the panic button needs to be pressed. And this, logically enough, as Prof Clark told James Gallagher of the BBC World Service, means: “Your heart rate goes up, your nervous system starts to kick in and you release stress hormones.”
Equally logically, this isn’t good for you. “If you’re exposed for several years, your body’s reacting like that all the time,” she says. “It increases your risk of developing things like heart attacks, high blood pressure, stroke and type 2 diabetes.”
I knew I found noise annoying; I didn’t realise it might be making me ill. If I was Prof Clark, to hammer this point home I’d assemble a huge tower of Marshall speakers and boom out the message: the din is destroying us. The planet needs shushing.
Our world’s getting noisier. Population growth and urbanisation are factors. Literally, as well as metaphorically, we’re shouting over each other. And I don’t discount my own contribution. I’m told my voice carries a long way, at a volume inversely proportionate to the importance of what I have to say. Furthermore, I’ve had the temerity to boom out from televisions and radios all these years. Sorry about that.
Noise begets more noise. It’s as if we’re all in one of those bars or restaurants that, like most, has dispensed with soft furnishings. Everywhere is wood and metal. Even when these places are quiet, they’re noisy. The scrape of a chair goes right through you. Then the people arrive and it gets really noisy, really quickly.
It only needs a handful of people to raise their voices a little and everyone else has to raise theirs. The shouting match is under way. Before long, the cave dwellers deep inside us are losing their minds. I say bring back the carpets and the curtains. We need the chintz back in play to help us pipe down.
I acknowledge the possibility that all this is part of getting old. I don’t recall feeling this way when I was younger, at least consciously – maybe the caveman inside me had his fingers in his ears even then. But as far as the conscious me was concerned, I think noise spoke of life, of energy, of things happening, of excitement, of possibilities.
It’s a strange young man indeed who goes round saying that all he really wants is a bit of peace and quiet. That’s the kind of thing my grandparents said, although by then, to a lesser or greater extent, they were miserably hard of hearing – that most unwelcome late-life access to a little more silence. And it’s no wonder that’s how we end up, given the hammering our ears and brains have to take all our lives. I’ll shut up now. I’ve done enough shouting.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
