'No Place to Hide' from Airport Noise
by Matthew Sparkes, London, UK 
on 07.17.07
Aviation creates a lot of pollution; carbon and noise. A new report has said that people all over London are being affected by Heathrow airport, even those on the other side of the city, many miles away.
The independent research consultancy, Bureau Veritas, measured noise levels all over the city, and found that it 'dominated the environment'. I used to live in Brixton, south London, and I'm going to agree with them 100% (although joy-riders and sirens also feature prominently in the background noise).
The report, 'No Place to Hide', goes on to blame a rise in flying and urges MPs to take action. In autumn the Government will decide whether or not to allow expansion of Heathrow, and the inevitable expansion of noise over London.
John Stewart, chairman of Hacan ClearSkies, an anti-airport-expansion group, said, 'they can't relax, they feel more and more stressed. If people are not used to having the noise, in many ways it's more intensive. It's almost like a noisy elephant in their house they can't escape.' ::The Guardian
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Show me a quite city. Even one with no airports for 100 miles will be very loud.
No place to hide from road noise, either. Garbage trucks and motorcycles are some of the worst in proximity, but I'm always amazed (and maddened) at how far road noise travels, even when you're deep in the wilderness.
Very few people know what silence (read: lack of manmade sound) really sounds like. It sucks.
When my girlfriend moved to London (camden) years ago, I was amazed that I could hear planes, almost constantly, over the phone. That and firecrackers.
Now I live hear too, a few miles north, and i don't think the noise bothers me at all. Last year I lived along the train tracks: try that... but we even got used to it.
By far the worst thing for me is scooters and bikes. They don't seem to have any muffler controls, and I find that, while the trains and planes fade into the background, there's always a startle fator with bikes. They're much louder, much closer, coming from any direction, and you never know when...
Think of it as the sound of our lust for fossil fuel, making it's journey from the ground to the sky.