Jin Yuqin had had enough. Trapped inside her apartment during the Covid-19 pandemic and forced for weeks to listen to the constant whine of an electric drill from downstairs, the 64-year-old retiree woke up to the noise one Saturday morning and decided it was time to confront her neighbor.Having lived in the same apartment complex in Beijing’s Chaoyang district for over 20 years, Jin had always gotten along well with her neighbors. This changed in late April of this year, when the family downstairs began to remodel their home. Every weekday, the noise began at 8 a.m. on the dot, and continued until almost 6 p.m. except for a short lunch break at noon.“During the daytime, no matter what I did, I couldn’t escape the noise. It made my head ache and my heart beat faster,” Jin complains to TWOC. Until that recent Saturday, though, she had never had any grounds to complain, since the family didn’t violate Chinese law—which permits renovations on residential housing Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.All across urban China, noise pollution is becoming a serious health and environmental hazard. According to a 2017 report by German company Mimi Hearing Technologies, based on statistics collected by the World Health Organization, Guangzhou suffered from the worst noise pollution among 50 surveyed cities in the world. Beijing ranked sixth, followed by Shanghai at 12th, and Hong Kong at 17th.
Traffic is a major source of noise in China’s biggest cities (VCG)According to China’s Emission Standard for Community Noise, which was drawn up by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2008, the noise level in urban residential areas must be lower than 55 decibels in the daytime, and below 45 decibels at night. The WHO recommends an even lower daytime maximum of 50 decibels—anything above that makes people “moderately annoyed.” The WHO Regional Office for Europe states that outdoor noise of above 42 decibels is disruptive to sleep, and above 50 decibels can lead to heart attacks.Yet even by China’s relatively lax standards, nighttime noise levels exceeded legal maximums in residential areas of over 25 percent of Chinese cities in 2016, according to statistics from the MEP. In all 28 provincial capitals and four provincial-level municipalities, the proportion was over 40 percent.Nationwide, environmental protection departments at all levels of government received over 522,000 complaints about noise in 2017; 50 percent of those concerned construction work, while 36 percent were related to social activities. Around 10 percent had to do with industry, and 3 percent to do with transportation.Though noise pollution, like air and water pollution, is one of the world’s major environmental problems, its harmful effects are perhaps less well understood. The German report suggested strong links between environmental noise and hearing loss, finding that, on average, people in the noisiest cities had hearing abilities that were 10 years “older” than those in the quietest cities. The hearing level of Guangzhou residents was estimated to be 17.4 years older than their real age.Environmental noise pollution has been linked to higher risks of heart attack, stroke, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. It has also been found to impair children’s cognitive skills, such as reading and memory, and double the risk of depression and anxiety.Tian Chunlai, a 52-year-old resident of Liaoning province, has been battling noise pollution for 16 years. In 2004, Tian moved into an apartment close to the high school that her daughter attended, and the problems began: The building was next to a busy street, with traffic noises day and night. One block away was a plaza where neighbors gathered to exercise and dance to music every evening, and the building next door hosted a KTV bar that often operated late into the night.
A worker installs a soundproof barrier on a viaduct in Jiangsu province (VCG)Tian feels that her quality of life suffered from the noise. “In the first few years, even the kids upstairs would often practice the erhu [two-stringed fiddle] at home,” she tells TWOC. Her sleep quality, which was already poor, declined drastically, and she had to keep the windows closed even during the hottest days of summer.Zhao Bing (pseudonym), a 32-year-old white-collar worker in Shanghai, finds the noise in the subway to be the most unbearable. “The noise of the train and the sound of people drive me crazy every day,” she says. “Sometimes, you may meet people who play music or video on their phone out loud.”
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