12 Sep 2019

What are the effects of noise pollution on human health?

Noise Pollution Impact

The impact of noise pollution on human health can be in small or large doses. Noise pollution is considered noise in the surrounding area that is causing a disturbance or is considered undesired. It can come from many different sources including transport, heavy machinery or music systems which can all contribute to having an impact on human health. The effects it can have on human health can be adverse and this will be discussed further in this blog.

Impact of Noise Pollution on Human Health

Hearing Problems

Effective hearing is one of the crucial senses for the body to have so they can be aware of their surroundings. At the same time, whilst it’s beneficial to hear effectively, your ears can only take so much noise before it begins to become a problem. Once the noises around us become indesirable, it can begin to interfere with our hearing capacity. It can cause future hearing impairments which could eventually lead to hearing loss.

Sleeping Difficulties

Another effect of noise pollution on human health is disturbing your sleep. This is more to do with the psychological impact that it has rather than the physical impact. When disturbing noise appears whilst you’re asleep, it can cause stress and prevent you from sleeping properly. Poor sleep then has physical effects such as changing your mood, increasing fatigue and generally disturbing the how the body normally functions.

Cognitive Issues

As your ears are connected to your brain, they work in coordination to produce the body’s responses. This means that any noise that your body interacts with, the messages are sent to the brain which it would interpret to action a response. If too much noise gets sent to the brain, it can impact how the brain functions and effectively reduce the response rates. 

Cardiovascular Issues

When your body interacts with noise, another impact of noise pollution on human health is that it can interrupt your heart. This is because the noise is channelled through your body and disturbs the heart, causing it to beat at a faster rate. It releases adrenaline and other forms of stress hormones. This will increase blood pressure as a result and impact how fast blood is pumped around the body.

 

Related Articles