Oh for the sound of silence. Too much noise can kill you, a new study reveals.

By Theodore Dalrymple

I have long held that an excessive interest in Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) is the sign of a misguided mind.

Poe wrote, in The Fall of the House of Usher, of the Mad Trist of Sir Lancelot Canning, that there was little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity that could have had interest for a sensitive soul. The same could be said (in my opinion) of Poe himself.

Well, de gustibus and all that. Nevertheless, when Poe wrote of Usher that he had an absolute horror of all superfluous sound or noise, he might have been describing me.

During the war, there were posters at stations asking passengers whether their journey was really necessary. It is time for posters everywhere asking whether the noise you make is really necessary.

There was a paper recently in the British Medical Journal about the health effects of noise pollution.

According to it, noise pollution ‘contributes to a wide range of adverse health outcomes, including sleep disturbance, cardiovascular disease and premature death’.

With a degree of precision I always find suspect, it goes on to say noise pollution was ‘associated with’ 130,000 healthy life years lost in Britain in the year 2018.

‘Associated with’ is not the same as ‘caused by’. It is very difficult to separate noise as a cause, except in very specific circumstances. Moreover, even the concept of noise pollution is not without its ambiguities.

The paper defines such pollution as ‘noise that is unwanted or excessive that negatively affects health and wellbeing’. If, by definition, noise pollution affects health and wellbeing, it is hardly surprising that noise pollution is found to be ‘associated with’ harmful effects.

One man’s noise is another man’s delight. A newspaper once sent me to report on a concert by Oasis, or rather on the audience of a concert by Oasis.

The first thing the publicity department of the concert did on my arrival was to provide me with earplugs: a curious commentary, I thought, on a musical act.

Obviously, it thought that it might damage my hearing and that it owed me, in the Uriah Heepish modern locution, ‘a duty of care’.

I remember also the title of the autobiography of the piano accompanist, Gerald Moore, Am I Too Loud?

The concept of health and wellbeing is likewise ambiguous, or perhaps I should say all-inclusive and inherently totalitarian. The WHO definition of health is that it is ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’.

It follows from this that you are not in a state of health if you are irritated by something. That releases adrenalin and corticosteroids, and puts up your blood pressure and pulse rate, after all.

The paper in the BMJ points out that ‘disadvantaged and marginalised communities may be more likely to be exposed to harmful levels of environmental noise’.

Note that all people who have any characteristics in common with others now live in ‘communities’ of people with those characteristics. Thus I live in the community of the blue-eyed and left-handed.

Needless to say, the paper does not mention that certain people make the constant noise in which they live, because the general population must never be held to account for any part of its own misfortunes.

To deprecate noise on health grounds (other than in specific instances) is difficult because of confounding factors, from which it is difficult to isolate noise. But I hate noise deontologically, so to speak, or on aesthetic rather than utilitarian grounds.

To adapt slightly the jingle on Dr Fell:

‘I do not like thee, Excess Noise,

The reason why, it spoils my joys;

Especially when made by boys;

I do not like thee, Excess Noise.’

First published in the Oldie