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Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

Sure, maybe after we handle air pollution, carbon in the atmosphere, and plastic, then we can talk about noise pollution.

It's so fun to point out new problems, but trying to prioritize everything is basically prioritizing nothing.

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It always depends where you live. I lived next to a main crossing once and I certainly got my share of air pollution there. If you would have asked me back then what I’d rather get rid off — noise or air pollution — I think I would’ve picked air pollution.

The effect constant noise polution has is very hard to grasp. I only noticed what it did to me when I moved to a new flat after a few years.

It felt like a 1000 pound weight had been lifted from me, and I realized it was about the noise after all. My sleep got much better, which had all kinds of positive effects on the rest of my life.

I can still remember vividly the first night I slept in the new flat in (what felt like) complete silence and peace for the first time in years.

If I could give advice to my past me, I would tell myself that the noise affects me much more than I thought.

Your experience made me think back to the noisiest nights of sleep I recall ever having. Earplugs were an absolute godsend. Did you try those at your old flat?

I've tried them. They can help but don't work for everyone.

You can buy air filter/purifiers for air pollution. You can avoid plastic to some degree. You can't isolate all noise factors, especially low-freq vibrations. Try sleeping in an area where road noise occurs 24/7. Sleep deprivation is a huge health modifier. "Not paying attention to X because Y is more important" Most people don't give a shit about Y, when X isn't fixed for them, they see X as far more immediate/important problem: its like telling an african tribe that cooked for thousands of years with wood that you can't burn wood from tropical forest for cooking because its causes Global Warming.

In other words, you can mitigate your exposure any given pollution type to some degree. The air and plastic pollution measures you list are not perfect either. It's cheaper and easier to address noise pollution than air pollution: a pair of foam earplugs is a lot cheaper than an indoor air purifier.

> Try sleeping in an area where road noise occurs 24/7.

I admit I've never done that, but this seems like an unfairly extreme comparison. The same challenge can be posed for air pollution: try sleeping in an area where the air is bad enough to impact your sleep quality.

> but this seems like an unfairly extreme comparison.

Well, millions of people live near major roads. Not everyone has the luxury of living in quiet suburbs and far from traffic.

> try sleeping in an area where the air is bad enough to impact your sleep quality.

Thats why i have an air purifier and windows closed for most of the week.

It is possible to tackle more than one issue at a time. Also realize that noise is often a measure of inefficiency - for instance, one of the ways to make trains quieter is to keep wheels and rails smooth. That has the added benefit of extending the life of wheels and rails.

Noise pollution is more immediate problem. Once your neighbor installs loud AC or swimming pool pump right next to you bedroom window and you cannot fall asleep at night, you won’t even last a week of sleep deprivation. I would say solving noise pollution is actually higher priority than all the other issues you listed.

Every time we visit the relatives in London we end up talking about the air pollution and noise pollution. It's the noise or light pollution that stops us sleeping though. Then we sometimes talk about it again when we're far enough north to be away from it. It's so nice to have quiet, dark nights again, and the first sleep once back is incredibly refreshing.

We both think the relatives are certifiable to not have moved away. :)

Do you live in the country? How did you decide on your current home?

Almost. We are right at the edge of a town in a rural part of the UK. :)

Moved for work - there was a surprisingly good opportunity that pulled us away from a more urban, but not major city, location. We did want to get out of urbanity anyway. Though I no longer work at the same place, hell will freeze before I move back to a city, or to nights that are no longer jet black.

It’s hard to tackle carbon in the atmosphere when you can’t hear yourself think.

Or you're not getting good sleep because of noise pollution.

ah but it just so happens that the cause of most air pollution, carbon in the atmosphere, and noise pollution in cities is the same thing: cars & trucks

I agree with this. Removing cars and trucks would solve so many problems with our living areas. Removing burner cars and trucks would do 90% of it even if we didn't evict them from our living areas.

When I go on a walk in town (with speed limits usually at 50 kph or 40 kph), it's generally the tire noise that prevents me from having an enjoyable chat. It's especially bad in wet weather, but even on dry asphalt it's rarely the engines that disturb me most.

Ever lived near a train? Horn blasts, diesel fumes, dust & particulate kicked up from the railbed.

Or a bus stop? Air brakes, audible announcements, and in some cities chirping every few seconds to alert the blind to its presence.

I live, and am sitting, less than 500 feet from several trains right now. I can hear one rolling on the tracks. I can hear the ding-dong noise they play before they close the doors on another.

It is noooothing compared to the honking of any driver who feels like anything in the universe costing them more than one half of a second deserves an airhorn blast. Its nowhere near as annoying as the beep-beep-beep of trucks backing up. Its much fainter than the blasting ambulance and fire truck sirens necessary to pierce the bubble of car drivers attention. Its also much less than the idling engine noise of the delivery vans.

Honking from the (closer!) freeway barely registers. Horn blasts from the level crossing resonate in my chest. When a train zooms by it’s at least over quickly. When it lumbers out of the station and the whole sequence is delivered directly to my window, I just have to pause my conversation/TV show for a minute or two.

It was worth the substantial rent discount at the time I lived there, but pretty extreme as noise goes.

Agreed. Train noises can be soothing at a distance -- except, of course, any horn blasts. Road traffic is way more stressful, thanks to honking, revving, beeping, and occasional skidding.

Also, road sounds remind me of the stresses of driving in traffic, whereas the train rides I've taken in my life have been a lot more peaceful.

I lived in a student building between a major railway line in London and a large road.

The railway was far, far nicer. About ¾ of trains were electric, and just make a "whoosh" noise on the well-maintained welded track. The diesel trains were louder accelerating, but the noise wasn't participating disturbing.

My friend on the road side of the building couldn't open her window because of the traffic fumes, and even though the building was new and had good sound insulation, my side was nicer.

You need fewer trains and buses to transport the same amount of goods and people that trucks and cars transport.

It doesn’t matter how long the trains are, but how often they run. You need trains running every few minutes to approximate the functionality of cars, and every one of them must honk at every level crossing.

German trains don't honk at level crossings and Germany doesn't build any new level crossings (for safety reasons). Japanese trains don't honk at crossings either afaik, I don't know about other countries.

One of the largest sources of noise pollution in residential areas are cars. Cars also happen to be a large source of carbon emissions and air pollution. Tackle that and get a win-win-win I'd say.

There are 7 billion people on the planet. Surely we can tackle more than one quality of life issue at a time.

EVs take care of all those problems all at once

EVs will eliminate engine noise, they won't eliminate tire noise (fewer, lighter cars may) or aerodynamic noise (fewer, slower cars will). It will be a big improvement, but it will not take care of the problem; living at a major road will still be terrible. [1]

EVs don't appreciably reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, you need clean electricity generation for that. I'd hesitantly agree that they're going to be a part of a long term solution.

[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2016/06/05/will-electric-cars-make...

> EVs don't appreciably reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, you need clean electricity generation for that.

EVs do emit less CO2 than conventional vehicles, even in US states like West Virginia who power their grids mostly non-renewably: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/electric-car-well-to-wh...

Zero tailpipe CO2 emissions are just one advantage of EVs. They also emit zero particulates, zero ozone, and negligible engine noise.

EVs get cleaner as grid power gets cleaner. By contrast, tightening emissions standards only affects brand-new conventional vehicles, and these only get dirtier as they age.

This topic has been discussed on HN before; here's an insightful article and thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15106398

I'm aware. Hence my saying that they're a part of a long term solution.

The linked article doesn't actually say what an EV in West Virginia pollutes (just flat out states that it's less than a conventional car), but the national average quoted is a bit less than half of a conventional car. The OP -- as people often do -- pretended it's zero. It's not. If you want zero emissions: walk. Or ride a bike, which is a rounding error off of zero. I hope you're just as quick to post your article when people make that mistake.

The number gets lower as grids get cleaner, yes, if they get cleaner. But we're at best struggling to clean up our grids, and moving transportation to electricity is going to roughly double the demand; at least if we pretend we don't have to simultaneously change the way we "consume" mobility.

Easier to clean a few large energy sources. Fossil fuels also require energy to extract, refine, transport apart from the vehicle itself.

>emit zero particulates,

Particulates from tires still happen for EV's and are a large concern in PM2.5 amounts.

Tires are on all vehicles. Combustion is a larger and more immediate concern because of NOX and PM2.5/PM10. Its fair to prioritize that by moving burner power out of cities and using EVs, then go after other sources of PM and NOx like power plants or tires.

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