Noise & Health

"Silence is the secret to sanity."
Astrid Alauda Unlike an alarm or a siren, and unlike noise made by power tools, road work, and modes of transportation, incessant dog barking serves no purpose and goes on and on long after the road work, leaf blowers, lawn mowers, power tools, household appliances, etc. have stopped, and the sirens, trains & planes have passed by.

There are few studies and articles specifically on barking dog noise and human health, and quite frankly a lot of people don't take you seriously when you talk about the harmful noise created by barking dogs unless they've experienced it first hand, but there are a lot of studies made by noted scientists and organizations on how noise, stress & sleep distrubances can have a very serious, negative effect on health.

From the Franklin Institute...Some articles on how your brain responds to stress, and the devastating effects it can cause...

• How Your Brain Responds to Stress
• Stress & Noise (scroll down to see Sudden Death from Noise)
• Stress & Memory
• Impact of Stress Studies

From The World of Psychology Blog...

• Noise Activates Our Stress Hormones
• The Physical Effects of Long Term Stress (2 pages)

From Environmental Health Perspectives...

• Noise & Stress: A Comprehensive Approach

From the World Health Organization...

• Health Effects of Noise - World Health Organization
• Occupational and Community Noise - WHO fact sheet #258
• Noise and Sleep - World Health Organization
• Noise Effects & Morbidity - World Health Organization
• Your Home Affects Your Health - World Health Organization - Early findings for the Budapest Conference, Copenhagen, Bonn, 13 February 2004 - "People whose sleep is disturbed by noise at night are 46% more likely to have an accident at home than those who sleep more peacefully."

International Commission on the Biological Effects of Noise...

• Noise As A Public Health Problem - Proceedings from the 9th Congress of the ICBEN held in Conneticut in 2008

From OSHA...

• Q: How can I tell if a noise situation is too loud? (OSHA) A: There are two rules: First, if you have to raise your voice to talk to someone who is an arm's length away, then the noise is likely to be hazardous. Second, if your ears are ringing or sounds seem dull or flat after leaving a noisy place, then you probably were expose to hazardous noise.

From The Center for Hearing & Communication...

• Noise & Health Fact Sheet
• Noise & Hearing Fact Sheet (scroll down to the warning signs; I've had all the warning signs after being outside while my neighbor's dog is barking)

From the Environmental Protection Agency...

• Noise, A Health Problem

The Importance of Sleep...

• Sleep-Wake Cycle: Its Physiology and Impact on Health from the National Sleep Foundation
• The Importance of Sleep from E Medicine Health

Some miscellaneous articles on noise...

• Noise Pollution: A Modern Plague - Lisa Goines, RN and Louis Hagler, MD, Southern Medical Journal, Volume 100: March 2007, pages 287-294.
• Hospital Noise Stresses Patients & Staff (I never heard a hospital noise that was as loud as the sound of my neighbor's dog, as I can hear it in my house...)
• Why We Need Silence To Survive
• Home, Community and Recreational Noise - The American Speech-Language Hearing Association (no mention of barking dogs specifically, but if all the noise makers mentioned in this newletter can affect hearing, imagine what a barking dog that makes your ears ring can do...)

Relevant articles published in science & health journals that are available for purchase...

• Stress Hormones in the Research on Cardiovascular Effects of Noise - Noise & Health journal Volume 5, Number 18, Jan - Mar 2003 , pp. 1-11(11)
• Psychological Aspects of Noise-Induced Stress and Annoyance - Dept of Environmental Medicine, Goteborg University, Sweden
• The deleterious effects of dogs on human health from The Journal of Public Health, Oxford Journals (this includes the impact of dog barking on humans)

Barking Dog Noise Specifically

• BarkingDogs.Net
• Why Exposure to Chronic Barking is So Debilitating by Dr. Craig Mixon
• Excess Barking, a more complex problem than it would appear by Dick Murray, veterinary practitioner in Australia (Urban Animal Management Conference Proceedings, 2003)
• Understanding Systemic Noise Trauma by Dr. Craig Mixon
• Noise in the Animal Shelter Environment: Building Design and the Effects of Daily Noise Exposure "In addition, noise produced by an individual dog barking can reach levels well over 100 dBA" (Sales, Hubrecht, Peyvandi, Milligan, & Shield, 1996)
• Bark at Wikipedia "Many dogs can bark at 100 dBA. Even at 16 metres away and with the dog outside a closed window, the noise level of a barking dog can be well over the level that causes psychological distress."

Miscellaneous Relevant Articles...

• Human Health in Relation to Pets in Urban and Indigenous Communities

Quiet Web Sites & Organizations

• The Noise Pollution Clearinghouse NoNoise.Org
• The Right to Quiet Society - Vancover, BC, Canada
• The Accoustic Ecology Institute based in Santa Fe, New Mexico...the quest for quietude...
• Noise Free America