Noisy Singapore? How Noise Pollution Is Affecting Us | Talking Point | Full Episode

noise as a city-state we're inundated by it and sometimes it gets too close for comfort the housing and development board says

it received a whopping 11 400 noise related complaints between january and september 2020 that's 42 complaints on noise every single day

a more than three-fold increase compared to the same period the year before the statistics show that the average singaporean has been exposed to a more than usual amount of noise in the last

year so in this episode of talking point i delve deep into how noise can affect us in ways we least expect [Music]

but first let's find out what sort of noise people are most irked about dr lindlan youren works with the housing and development board to mediate noise

complaints between neighbors so that the disputes don't end up in court i understand you receive a record number of noise related complaints can you tell

us why that happened i think because of kovit 19 situation particularly during the circuit breaker months in april and may and for most of

these complaints that are noise related what were people complaining about it could be you know complaining upstairs making a lot of noise because of dragging the furniture

chairs and tables it could be also the sound that are generated from walking on the floor itself running the footsteps but there are also noise that created

from love music people bring organs a piano other instrument and of course there are also renovations there's a good chance many of us will continue working from home

do you expect the number of noise related cases to be high if we work from home there will be more activities at home and with the more activity they're bound to generate more noise that could affect your

neighbours [Music] so for my line of work i'm out on a shoot most of the time which means i don't have to worry about the noise that affects people when they're working from

home but i do know someone who is having a really big problem with that welcome to your clean dance before the pandemic wayne chan used to

do this my name is wayne chan and it's my pleasure to be a host on this beautiful morning but now he's mostly stuck at home where

he's forced to host events virtually for months he has been dealing with incessant drilling noise coming from one of his neighbors units

it irritated him so much that he posted this on social media seems to be much more renovation and construction works happening over the

past one year when i'm talking about uh 2021. manpower is now limited previously

2021. manpower is now limited previously you know you could have everyone go into a unit to do renovations but now just one two workers so that's why renovations are being dragged out even longer so this sound i mean it's so bad

that you can't do your work so i host uh like virtual conferences virtual parties at home so this drilling makes it you know i can't do these shows as well as i would like

to you'd hear the drilling and then you hear the hacking and then hammering then somebody else like kind of like

dragging something out how else has it affected you i think apart from disturbing your work you can't rest in peace you know you can't rest so you're saying you physically

feel more tired i would say that all this noise uh just definitely makes you a little bit more anxious a little more tense and all of that would actually result in you not resting as well as you would

like to you know i feel pretty trapped in my own house a complaint to his condo management yielded no positive results as wayne found out

no one was breaking the rules the housing and development board classifies renovation into two types general and noisy

both are not allowed on public holidays noisy renovation like drilling and demolition works can only be carried out between 9am and 5pm on weekdays

general renovations which include less noisy works like carpentry and painting can start at the same time but go on till 6 pm as well as on saturdays

these rules apply to both condos and htv flats noisy renovation works can produce noise levels of over 100 decibels at any given time

that's way above the sound safety limit of 55 decibels as prescribed by the national environment agency but beyond disrupting our work and rest

i wonder if there is more to how noise really affects us i'm about to get a shocking discovery and this can't be repaired damage forever yes

there is very little study on the impact of noise on us in singapore which is why in 2021 researchers from the national university of singapore decided that

they would bring more attention to how noise exposure can cause health issues after taking eighteen thousand audio recordings across the country audiologist jyonghui ting has something

interesting to tell us she's asked me to meet her here just outside the old sarangoon bus interchange so what are we doing here well because we found from the study

this place is one of the noisier residential area in singapore it's in here in tehrangun that's right oh okay look around it's actually very noisy here

sarangan is the noisiest neighborhood in singapore according to wheating's research noise levels around serangoon recorded the highest average of 73.1 decibels

that's as loud as a ringing alarm clock and over eight times the safe sound pressure prescribed by the world health organization coming in a close second is orchard and

otram with an average noise level at 72.8 decibels and third noises look at tima with average noise levels at 72.6 decibels

what about the way the estate is designed where the buildings are placed the overhead bridges and all that does that also contribute to the noise yes it does actually contribute to the acoustic environment out there i can't even hear

what you said when the bus went by so why not let me bring you to the next place so steve i brought you to this area because i wanted to show you actually how enclosed area trap sounds actually

make the overall noise level even higher so if you see right now actually the volume around here is about 67.

okay is that good or bad so this is actually not entirely good because it's really high right yeah so what happens is that when we have the enclosed area it traps the south and actually

track all the sound in business area yeah actually i do feel like it's more noisy now we're hitting like 82 86 but and remember the 55 is sort of the okay level but you know another 10 15

decibels doesn't seem so bad what right well that's not true steve because for every six decibel increase is a double of sound pressure level so what we actually see is a more than four times

increase in the sound pressure level okay what about the height lower floors versus higher floors which is better which is less noisy so this is actually quite a complicated question to answer

because their different perspectives are looking at it so what we know is that top floors generally are physically more away from the major noise like your traffic and construction noise but then

the thing is that that's only part of the picture because even if you live on a higher floor you may still be exposed to renovation work noise plus there are less physical barriers on

higher grounds to block sounds the same study also found that singapore's average outdoor sound level throughout the day is 69.4 decibels that far surpasses the world health

organization's recommendation of no more than 55 decibels so in our city the waste levels on average are higher than recommended safety levels

what kind of impact does that have on us professor william martin is one of the lead researchers in singapore's biggest study about environmental noise and its implications on our health

so noise is all that sound that's going on any form of sound we can call it noise he's asked me to meet him here in a dance studio

there's kind of two categories of noise that affects our health one of it is city noise singapore night okay noise that's going on in the background air

con units diesel buses airplanes flying over construction kids screaming playing it all adds together and raises the sound levels that if we're exposed to that for long

periods of time it's associated with all kinds of problems with uh cardiovascular disease just from being around that type of sound for a long time general stress and anxiety so that type

of city noises really causes long-term health problems these health problems according to professor martin are associated with prolonged exposure to city noise because

the body is stress so prof martin i have to ask you why you've asked me to meet you here in this studio a dance studio i think well one of the things that happens in dance classes

is they play music and sometimes that music can be at very very high levels the reason why i'm here is because prof martin wants to warn me of another kind of noise

not the kind in our environment but the kind that i inflict on myself and that leads to a different kind of problem the other type of noise is noise that

has a high enough volume that it can cause physical damage to the inner ear causing hearing loss so sitting noises isn't usually going to be high enough and long enough to do that

but if you're at a dance studio or you go to a night club or a fitness class or you just like your music loud when you're on the mrt so in that sense the difference really is about the intensity

and the duration of the sound that's right it's a combination of how high the volume is and how long you hear it that causes the damage so when i'm here in a dance studio is it because the music's you know hitting my

eardrums like that well i'll show you i'll give you an example in order for sound to exist something has to vibrate but what we don't realize about sound is that it has a tremendous amount of

energy that passes across the room and that energy is what can go into our ear canal move our eardrum yeah move the tiny bones in the middle ear and cause damage to the delicate

structures in the inner ear and i'm going to show you an example of how much power we have so this is this is just a quiet tuning fork and you can see the ping pong ball wrestling against it and now i'm going to bang it on my foot

and just show you wow so you can see that the power of the vibration moves that ping pong ball distance

that's invisible dust we don't see it and and it's that power that causes the damage and i'd like to show you what happens in the inner ear so in the inner ear

this is well behind the eardrum stick your finger behind your ear there's a little bit of that bone there's a little snail structure in there called the cochlea and inside the cochlea there are

thousands and thousands of tiny cells called hair cells um and this is a picture of one okay there's about in the young healthy ear there's as many as 18 000 of these oh

wow okay all 18 000 will fit on the head of a pen wow okay okay on the top is a little structure the yellow part we call the hair bundle the sound energy rocks

the hair bundle back and forth when the sound wave comes in that tells the hair cell to send a signal through the nerve to the brain that you can hear so if we look at a close-up of just the

yellow the hair bundle this is what a healthy hair bundle looks like right the hair bundle is the perfect rose everything looks great there's a whole bunch of them see what happens when a hair bundle is exposed to loud

noise all right we're going to take an empty hand and make a fist right okay that's the hair cell that's the green part okay we're going to add the hair bundle on top right okay and the arm is the nerve

carrying the signal to the brain the sound wave comes in we're at breakfast and we're talking and it's nice and quiet so right okay nice conversation we're talking with our friends everything's good right but that

afternoon you're going to the f1 race right well before you go your wife says you got to vacuum the house okay vacuum cleaner's a little louder okay hold it up it still looks pretty

good doesn't it yeah okay f1 you've been to an f1 yep it's loud it's loud it's really low you're ready to do your best f1 yeah yeah three two one [Music]

okay what did you do oh my god okay remember our hair bundles this is what it's supposed to look like now in real animals and real humans

if we expose the hair bundles to loud sounds like an f1 this is exactly what happens okay they're destroyed right and once that happens try and rebuild it try and

make it straight can i okay try yeah you can never get it back it's never exactly the same no and the hair cell underneath the hair bundle will die and you'll get

hearing loss permanent forever wow every time we're exposed to very loud sounds our ears are one step closer to becoming permanently damaged because with every exposure to loud

noise we lose some of the 18 000 hair cells in each ear that will never grow back so for the average person at which point

should i start worrying about my hearing well the first people who are probably going to notice are going to be your friends and family yeah because you're saying huh what you're missing a lot so those are the first signs

another one is something we call tinnitus ringing in the ears and that's often a sign of damage to the inner ear if you have any of those types of things go get a hearing test

for the past five years singapore has seen an average of 218 cases of noise-induced deafness in the workplace every year so the next time you decide to pump up

the volume think again but that is noise i can control what about noise in the country that i can't i'm anxious for an answer to this

problem and it seems a research team over at nanyang technological university might have the right solution for me we

get natural ventilation but lesser noise [Music] whoa that's out so given the exposure we have to loud noises around us i wonder if there's

anything we can do to help minimize the health risk for ourselves and i hear there's actually someone with some cool

new technology that can do just that [Music] this is called the anti-noise control

window this prototype developed by prof lamban and researchers at the nanyang technological university promises to cut noise levels by at least 10 decibels

so this speaker simulates the noise from the outside like aircraft or traffic or mrc noise so microphones will pick up the noise and then it will calculate and

generate an opposite sound that reduces the noise levels inside wow so if i'm in there it should be a lot quieter the sound right here yes really yes come on

let's go okay so this is the typical window size right these small speakers over here are canceling the sounds that are coming into the window so we get natural

ventilation but lesser noise can you show me sure let me show you example of a tone yep so this is about 53.

now it's about 36. oh like that didn't that's about it do you do that again switch it off okay so that's quite significant yes that's right so for tones it's more

significant so let me show you another example so this is aircraft flying by jet aircraft okay we hear that all the time that's right so this is without so it picks about 70.

so the peak now goes to about 60 so there's about 10 decibel reduction in noise levels in overall wow okay what would be the limitations of this at the moment there are two big

limitations first is the visual obstruction as you can see second is the power and the low frequency performance of these small speakers but at the same time we don't want to block the opening

because we want natural ventilation so that's the challenge for the next step noise has sound waves of different frequencies most city noise like traffic planes and

airport units are low frequency these sound waves travel for longer distances so to reduce such noise in a big space like an apartment noise cancelling

systems like these speakers would have to be a lot bigger in order to produce mirror images of the sound waves that can cancel out or reduce the noise

although looking at it i can't imagine looking at my window and seeing all of this it's quite an eyesore that's right yeah so this is a proof of principle prototype so we hope to solve these challenges in the future

to remove all the speakers so you don't see them you know hide them somewhere and you know get better for performance at the same time so i can see how this device would help some people deal with noise pollution at

home but it's still another five years in the making in the meantime i'm wondering if there are other alternatives to help me deal with noise pollution now i'm in

hospital sound specialist dr gary lee has asked me to meet him here because he wants to show me how sound can have the opposite effect on us

so doctor when we hear the word noise we look at it in a very negative way but you're saying noise can also be kind of good when it comes to sound there are different acoustic properties and sounds

that we like we can consider them as pleasant sounds or music but sounds that we don't like we will consider them as noise if we use sound therapeutically it

can create a sense of peace it can lower stress it can even provoke and evoke good memories some people like water sounds because they feel that they are

in a beach or they are relaxing so what we want to choose is these sounds that actually provoke passive listening what we mean by passive listening means that i don't really attend to it's always in

the background and we play it and we just need bluetooth speakers in the room and then now with a lot of apps i have this white noise app which is a free app

there are a list of sounds so this is a fan sound water sound so let's say you like the sound and you set it at a level

that is not too loud it doesn't need to mask over the annoying sounds okay but it kind of feels the noise flow and then subconsciously it would evoke pleasant

feelings white noise like the sounds you hear from a tv has equal sound energy at every frequency because it contains all frequencies white noise is often used to mask other

sounds inhibiting your brain's ability to pick out that irritating sound in a sea of other sound waves we have some other products that can

help you just behind you it's a air filter air purifier that's right so do you hear a background noise it's quite loud right yeah so that's the idea

right so we want to feel the noise floor with a very neutral sound and that allows you to kind of reduce the distinction between the noise floor

and other trigger sounds that perhaps you have in your neighborhood so this is a sound pillow a sound pillow yep how does that work

so it has a little speaker inside very soft and you just connect this to your phone yup or any cd player i can literally play music that comes out of

my pillow that's right that's right wow so there are a lot of tools to help people to make their homes filled with pleasant and soothing

sounds so white noise or other more soothing sounds competes with outside noise by giving me something else to focus on think of it as creating a

psychological bubble to protect myself against loud noises you know i found out that noise certainly has an impact on our health in ways we may not realize

i never thought that every time i exposed myself to very loud noises a part of my ear literally dies so i'll be sure to minimize my exposure to self-inflicted loud noise and silly

noise where i can but if i can't walk away from noise that irritates me there's always technology i can turn to like this white noise app for a bit of peace and quiet

you