Back at the turn of the 20th Century, physician-bacteriologist Robert Koch predicted that, “One day, man will have to fight noise as fiercely as cholera and the plague.”
That day is definitely upon us.
The detrimental impact of noise goes far beyond the obvious problem of hearing loss. Over the last decades, researchers have shown, in observational as well as experimental studies, that chronic noise exposure disrupts sleep, impairs cognitive function, increases hypertension and cardiovascular disease, and adversely impacts outcomes among hospital inpatients.
“Traffic noise at night causes fragmentation and shortening of sleep, elevation of stress hormone levels, and increased oxidative stress in the vasculature and the brain. These factors can promote vascular dysfunction, inflammation and hypertension, thereby elevating the risk of cardiovascular disease,” wrote Thomas Münzel and colleagues in a comprehensive 2021 review article in the journal, Nature.
They note that there’s “high quality evidence” for links between noise exposure, ischemic heart disease, and higher cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.
More Noise, More Disease
Putting it simply, more noise means more disease, though it can be difficult to definitively prove direct causation. Many factors influence disease risk, and it is often true that people who live and work in the noisiest environments are also exposed to more airborne pollutants and chemical toxins, and often have worse diet and lifestyle patterns.
Still, there’s no doubting the general trend linking noise to disease. And it’s a growing problem that’s attracting attention from researchers, clinicians and journalists.
In his recent book, Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back, science journalist Chris Berdik takes an in-depth look at how noise impacts human physiology, how it shapes our world, and how we mitigate the adverse impacts of an ever-noisier world.
Noise, he contends, is the most pervasive yet least acknowledged pollutant in our daily lives.
“Traffic noise at night causes fragmentation and shortening of sleep, elevation of stress hormone levels, and increased oxidative stress in the vasculature and the brain. These factors can promote vascular dysfunction, inflammation and hypertension, thereby elevating the risk of cardiovascular disease”
–Thomas Münzel, MD
One of the big challenges in assessing the health impact of noise is that research tends to focus on the biggest and most measurable parameters, for example high-decibel industrial or traffic noise and its detrimental impact on hearing and on stress responses.
Looking Beyond Decibels
But people who don’t work in factories, or airports, or who don’t live alongside high-volume trucking routes, are still exposed to quite a lot of unwanted and potentially noxious sounds. Research models built on decibel-based thresholds cannot really account for the impact of these lower volume yet intrusive, stressful sounds.
Consider just how many devices are beeping, bleeping, ringing, and buzzing at us over the course of a day. Or the low-grade but constant traffic exposure, or road-rage horn honking on a long commute. These factors are more subtle and harder to quantify than high-decibel factory or construction noises. But they are cumulative and in aggregate they can be toxic, explains Berdik.
Berdik points to the work of Rick Neitzel, PhD, head of the University of Michigan’s Exposure Research Lab. Dr. Neitzel and colleagues are tracking the impact of ambient noise in common day-to-day settings like offices, restaurants, places of business—the annoying, unwanted sounds to which people are constantly exposed as they live their lives. The researchers are correlating the sound data with real time biometric data to get a more detailed and nuanced picture of how intrusive sounds affect physiology and disease risk.
Neitzel’s group is collaborating with Apple on a comprehensive hearing study using Apple’s popular airpod devices. “We will measure headphone and environmental sound exposures over time among our participants, and determine how these exposures impact hearing and stress levels,” according to a statement on the Michigan Public Health Apple Hearing Study website.
A New Threat: Server Farms
The world is getting more noisy, not less, and it is happening quickly. In addition to the well-documented sources of high-volume noise—factories, airports, roadways, construction sites, and the ever-increasing sound-pokes from digital devices, there’s a new concern: data centers and server farms.
Berdik notes that ‘these squat, concrete server farms devour energy and guzzle water. They also emit an incredible amount of noise. Heat is both a waste product and a lethal enemy of data processing hardware, so the servers must be blasted by noisy cooling systems 24/7.”
It used to be that data centers were situated in sparsely populated rural areas, so the noise was not a general public health concern, though obviously it would affect people who work in such facilities.
Inside server rooms the din easily tops 90 decibels. Outside, obviously the noise is not as extreme. But it can still reach 40 decibels, which is loud enough to have negative physiological impact.
But our ever-intensifying use of the internet, the advent of AI, and cryptocurrency mining, are driving demand for more server farms and they’re popping up in more populated areas. “Data centers are far and away the fastests growing sector of commercial construction in the United States, with nearly $30 billion spent building new ones in 2024, Berdik points out.
How loud are they? Inside server rooms the din easily tops 90 decibels—“power-tools loud,” Berdik explains. Outside, obviously the noise is not as extreme. But it can still reach 40 decibels, which is loud enough to have negative physiological impact, especially because the noise is constant.
Some public health researchers are already sounding the alarm. In early 2025, the journal Frontiers In Public Health put out a call for research papers on the health impacts of noise from “emerging technological sources” such as “cryptomining operations, massive data centers for cloud storage, and the proliferation of other digital infrastructures.”
The issue, Berdik says, is also generating lawsuits and public protests in a number of states including Texas, Arizona and Virginia. The latter state has the highest concentration of data centers in the US. Citizens are pressuring elected officials to hinder or outright block the construction of new facilities.
The Noise Gap
As with many other pollutants and health risk factors, noise disproportionately affects poor people, especially in population-dense urban environments. It’s not that more affluent people are spared the scourge of noise. But generally speaking, there are more open, green, quiet spaces in wealthier communities. Homes are generally built better, with noise-insulating windows. And these communities are usually far from factories, industrial plants, and high-traffic thoroughfares.
Berdik calls it “the noise gap.” Along with airborne pollutants, communicable pathogens, and other detrimental environmental factors, poor people are exposed to a lot more noise, and they are a lot less able to insulate themselves from it.
“They can’t fight the highway coming through, or they need the economic development from industry whether its noisy or not. And the vulnerability is higher—lack of green spaces, lack of housing that doesn’t have protection from sound– that wealthier areas might have.” Berdik says.
Along with airborne pollutants, communicable pathogens, and other detrimental environmental factors, poor people are exposed to a lot more noise, and they are a lot less able to insulate themselves from it.
All that said, noise cuts across socioeconomic strata, and well-off people are still exposed to plenty of jarring, stress-inducing sounds. Again, just consider how many digital devices, appliances, and tools are pinging at all of us all day—unless we intentionally deactivate these alarms. And let’s not forget the heinous traffic noise one encounters when transiting from place to place.
A Global Issue
While noise exposure is clearly a problem in cities, it’s not like idyllic rural areas are spared the ravages of the noise epidemic. This is clearly evidenced in filmmaker Karen Atkins 2024 documentary, The Quietest Year, which focuses on the rising toll of noise pollution in Vermont—the epitome of pastoral serenity in many peoples’ minds.
In an interview, Berdik says he got interested in questions about noise and health back in 2018, when he was writing a piece for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine about Harvard researcher Erica Walker, who was studying the physiological impact of noise and its potential public health consequences in the Boston area.
“As I started to dig into what are these effects, looking at all the research—there are substantial increases in CVD risk, dementia, hypertension, obesity, childhood development issues, all these things…..and yet this is a pollutant that nobody can even really agree on the definition of. That juxtaposition really sparked my curiosity, and that led to the book.”
Concerns about the deleterious effects of noise—and efforts to mitigate them—are now a worldwide movement. In 2024, researchers from Germany, Switzerland, and the US, headed by cardiologist, Thomas Münzel,convened to compile all the world’s literature on the adverse effects of transportation noise.
They distilled it into a comprehensive document covering the immunologic, metabolic, neurocognitive, and cardiovascular effects of chronic noise exposure. They delve into specific mechanisms of action through which unwanted, irritating sound wrecks our physiology, down to the cellular level.
Long-term exposure to environmental noise is at least partly responsible for 12,000 premature, preventable deaths on the European continent, and roughly 48,000 new cases of ischemic heart disease annually.
—European Environmental Agency (EEA)
Further, Münzel and colleagues issue a call to action for policy makers and medical organizations to start taking noise seriously as a public health risk factor. They also offer suggestions for mitigating noise from road traffic, aircraft, and trains.
Recently, the European Environmental Agency published a post estimating that long-term exposure to environmental noise is at least partly responsible for 12,000 premature, preventable deaths on the European continent, and roughly 48,000 new cases of ischemic heart disease annually. EEA contends that 22 million people in European countries suffer from chronic high levels of noise, and 6.5 million people suffer serious sleep disturbance as a result of noise.
EEA states that noise emission is “a priority work area” in the mandate of the agency.
The World Health Organization advises that “long-term exposure to noise from road traffic should not exceed 53dB during the day-evening-night period, and 45dB during the night to avoid adverse consequences on health.” WHO’s recommended values for rail travel are 54dB during the day-evening-night period and 44dB during the night, and for aircraft, 45dB during the day-evening-night period and 40dB during the night.
Asleep at the Wheel
On the subject of noise and public health, the US Environmental Protection Agency and other regulators have been asleep at the wheel for decades. The EPA did issue guidelines for limits on noise exposure and recommendations for controlling extreme noise levels. But they were recommendations, not rules. And that was back in 1974. They have not been updated since, other than some brief mentions about the negative impact of noise in the 1990 Clean Air Act.
With EPA and all the health-related regulatory agencies currently in shambles, nothing is likely to happen any time soon.
But grass roots campaigns, along with high profile books like Chris Berdik’s Clamor, and an ever-growing base of meaningful research documenting the adverse effects of noise, are pushing the issue into public awareness. With time, perhaps, this can lead to meaningful mitigation efforts.
Until then, we all have some measure of control over the amount of annoying, stress-inducing sounds to which we are exposed–perhaps more control than we realize. We can turn off the notification functions on our phones and computers. We can put our ringers on silent—unless we really need to answer calls immediately. We can choose not to watch violent noise-filled films or TV shows. We can make efforts to routinely get out into parks, onto trails, and into quieter green spaces.
No doubt the world is growing louder by the day. But if we all take small steps to reduce our noise quotient, we can at least put a damper on the din.
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