问题详情

Just Too Loud
Ted Rueter isn"t joking about possibly moving to New Zealand. And if he does go, it won"t be the rage or the expense of living in the U.S. that drives him away. It will be the leaf blowers. Americans now own more than 90 million of the evil things, he says, each of them making the job of lawn clearing much easier—and much, much louder. Rueter, a professor at UCLA who is head of the advocacy group Noise Free America, already fled Los Angeles to get away from the leaf-blower bother, only to move to New Orleans and find the problem just as bad there. "Everywhere has turned into leaf-blower hell." he says.
It"s not just the blowers that are driving Rueter daft. It"s the boom cars—those high-decibel(分贝), low-frequency speakers on wheels that cause your windshield to buzz and your eardrums to pulse" when they pull up next to you at a stoplight. It"s the car alarms too, as well as the barking dogs and the banging garbage trucks and the screaming airplanes and the roaring highways. It"s the explosion of ambient(周围的) noise that seems to be everywhere, costing more and more people not only their sleep and their sanity but increasingly their hearing and health as well.
According to the National Institutes of Health, more than 10 million Americans already suffer some permanent noise-induced hearing loss. They report that some 30 million are exposed to daily noise levels that will eventually reduce their ability to hear. One in eight children between the ages of 6 and 19 already have some degree of hearing loss, and adults who are going deaf are doing so earlier and earlier. "The greatest increase in noise-related hearing loss occurs for people a5 to 64 years old," says Dr. James Battey, director of the National Institute on Deafness. "This is almost 20 years younger than we would expect."
And it"s not just our ears the noise is hurting. It-takes sounds in excess of 85 db to damage hearing, but noise at less than 75 db may be linked to hypertension, and that at just 65 db leads to stress, heart damage and depression. Think the noise in your environment doesn"t rise to that level？ Think again. A ringing telephone can reach 80 db; a hair dryer hits 90 db; an ambulance siren can top out at 120 db. "Noise pollution is truly a public health threat, "says Representative Nita Lowey of New York, who has reintroduced a bill in Congress to turn down the volume. "It"s critical," she says, "that we work to diminish the impact noise has on our communities."
The booming of America has many causes. Population growth in city centers, loss of rural land to suburban sprawl, and the soaring number and size of cars on the highways all play a role. So too does the entertainment industry, with Walkmans, Pods and surround-sound theaters pouring noise into consumers" cars. Even sports stadiums, always noisy places, have got louder as earsplitting commercials fill the comparatively quiet interludes that used to prevail during pauses in the action.
Whatever the roots of the problem, the noise is now everywhere—and the workplace may be the worst place of all. At least 20% of US workers do their jobs in environments that could endanger their hearing, according to NIOSH. The US government estimates that more than 90% of coal miners suffer hearing impairment by age 50. Even farms are not exceptional: according to the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health, a staggering 75% of farmers now exhibit some hearing impairment, mostly as a result of noisy equipment. "Hearing loss is one of the most common workplace conditions, "says audiologist Ted Madison.
For kids, the racket starts in the cradle. A squeaky toy held close to the ear—which is precisely where babies may put them—can reach 94 db. A toy xylophone(木琴) can ring in at 92 db. And since babies" car canals are so small, a sound that gets in them may knock around harder than it docs in an
A．Y
B．N
C．NG请帮忙给出正确答案和分析，谢谢！