Turn down the noise, please

Madam, - After many years of indifference and neglect, the Irish State eventually enacted legislation to protect people from…

Madam, - After many years of indifference and neglect, the Irish State eventually enacted legislation to protect people from tobacco smoke. But there is another form of environmental pollution which is a danger to the long-term health of the public and which is being ignored by the authorities. This is the intolerable level of noise which we are forced to endure at gatherings such as concerts, discos and weddings.

Under the most recent health and safety legislation, the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) has a statutory responsibility to monitor noise levels in places of employment.This includes not only traditional as factories and workshops, but also places of entertainment. The HSA singularly fails to monitor the noise levels in such areas, despite complaints from members of the public.

The Department of Health and the various environmental agencies around the country, including the county councils, ignore the problem when it is brought to their attention.

Recently I attended a wedding where a member of the host family had his six-month-old child with him. Such was the noise level that the father had to have the baby wear a set of ear protectors such as those worn by adults operating a chain saw. The rest of us could not talk, but only shout and roar at each other.

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There is ample medical and scientific evidence that exposure to excessive noise will cause long-term hearing damage, and it is quite likely that in 20 or 30 years' time many Irish people will have with profound hearing difficulties. Many people with existing hearing difficulties are advised by their doctors not to expose themselves to excessive noise. What are they to do at gatherings of their family or close friends where their requests for a reduction in noise levels are ignored?

It is time that the statutory agencies charged with protecting our hearing did so, and that the many members of the general public who object to noisy rackets purporting to be music stood up and demanded that our hearing not be damaged. It is ironic that groups which play at such events spend hours practising their trade, yet at the events themselves, the level of noise is such that nothing can be heard except disjointed noise. - Yours, etc,
PAUL CURRY,
Kilcormac,
Co Offaly.