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| Year : 2014
| Volume
: 16 | Issue : 71 | Page
: 248 |
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| Noise pollution: Recent challenges in Indian scenario |
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Harshal T Pandve, Parvinder Singh Chawla
Department of Community Medicine, Smt. Kashibai Navale Medical College, Narhe, Pune, Maharashtra, India
Click here for correspondence address
and email
| Date of Web Publication | 18-Jul-2014 |
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How to cite this article:
Pandve HT, Chawla PS. Noise pollution: Recent challenges in Indian scenario. Noise Health 2014;16:248 |
Sir,
Noise is a sound that lacks agreeable musical quality, is noticeably unpleasant, is undesired or interferes with one's hearing of something. Noise pollution is annoying or harmful noise in an environment. [1] Unwanted sounds lead to not only hearing impairment, but also to many nonauditory health hazards and other problems like cardiovascular diseases, psychiatric disorders, work performance as well as sleep disorders. [2]
In Indian scenario, noise pollution is a regular phenomenon, especially in urban areas. Usually known sources of noise pollution are vehicular or traffic related or factory or occupational noise pollution. Such kind of noise pollution is part of day-to-day life, and nobody is really seems to be worried about it. The sources of noise pollution are usually multiply during festivals like Diwali, in which fire crackers are responsible for noise pollution. In public festivals as well as in celebrations of marriages, birthdays, election victories, making noise pollution seems to be normal. Earlier days fire crackers, bands were important sources of noise pollution, but in last few years some other factors are added to make unwanted sound. During public festival events and personal celebrations such as marriages, birthdays, election victories, the usually picture seen is walls of huge speakers along with fire crackers and bands. Most horrific of all these is walls of huge speakers sounding simultaneously, continuously with most noisy music, the intensity is so much that you can feel the vibration around you, you can feel the palpitations even if you are just passing by. To your surprise, you can see that not only adults, but also children around such noisy environment for hours dancing and enjoying the tunes produced by it. Such kind of exposure definitely leads to health as well as social hazards and especially innocent children are most affected by it. Though there are legislations regulating noise pollution, but nonimplementation of legislations leads to ever-rising rather multiplying noise pollution with the addition of new equipments of noise pollution.
In the recently published guideline by the World Health Organization for the burden of disease from environmental noise, it is concluded that future epidemiological noise research will need to focus on vulnerable groups such as children, older people, and lower socioeconomic groups. [3] To conclude, the situation of noise pollution is really alarming and need of the hour to generate awareness regarding noise pollution, its health and social hazards in the general population as well as strict implementation of legislations.
| References | |  |
| 1. | Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Available from: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary. [Last accessed on 2013 Dec 09]. 
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| 2. | Stansfeld SA, Matheson MP. Noise pollution: Non-auditory effects on health. Br Med Bull 2003;68:243-57.
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| 3. | Fritschi L, Brown AL, Kim R, Schwela D, Kephalopoulos S, editors. Burden of Disease from Environmental Noise. Quantification of Healthy Life Years Lost in Europe. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe; 2011.
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Correspondence Address:
Dr. Harshal T Pandve
Department of Community Medicine, Smt. Kashibai Navale Medical College, Narhe, Pune - 411 041, Maharashtra
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/1463-1741.137064
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| This article has been cited by | | 1 |
Promotion of eco-friendly Diwali: A students' perspective |
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| AbhijitVishwajit Nimbalkar, JayashreeSachin Gothankar, ReshmaSachin Patil, HarshalTukaram Pandve | | Environmental Disease. 2022; 7(3): 70 | | [Pubmed] | [DOI] | |
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