ACOUSTIC VIOLENCE:
A NEW NAME FOR AN OLD SOCIAL PAIN

by Federico Miyara^*

Acoustic violence is, certainly, not new; it is, rather, second nature for humankind, and myriads of examples might be traced back to the beginning of history. But we should first attempt a definition. Acoustic violence is just violence exercised by means of sound. Often, such sound will be loud noise, but it might also be the neighbor’s music going through the party wall or the constant hum of a busy city late in the night while one is trying to fall asleep.

Plain violence is defined in the dictionary¹ both as an extreme force causing damage or unrest and as a rough treatment using physical force, especially in order to hurt or harm illegally. Force is mentioned twice. Even though actual forces involved in sound waves are very small, they are not so small if we consider the tiny mechanism of the inner ear on which they are ultimately impinging. Then we find four words with much in common: damage, unrest, hurt and harm. To be sure, acoustic violence may cause all of them, as well as unease, discomfort and helplessness, under proper conditions. Note that intentionality is not necessary in order that violence exists. The same can be said of acoustic violence. As a matter of fact, in many cases the aggressor is not thoroughly aware that he or she is exercising violence. Finally, we find a reference to the illegal nature of many violent actions. Once more, the same is true for acoustic violence, although the lack of enforcement leads to generalized impunity as regards to acoustic aggression (we will get back to this issue later). So much for the definitions.

It is not easy to explain how an idea that at first seems unlikely and then obvious sprouts from mind. Almost certainly, the members of the Scientific Interdisciplinary Committee of Ecology and Noise² were not thinking about the dictionary when they coined the expression "acoustic violence" to designate... acoustic violence. Perhaps it was a mixture of common sense and good luck, which led to such a novel name for an ancient problem in 1996, while programming an international meeting on noise which would turn into the First International Multidisciplinary Conference on Acoustic Violence, held in Rosario, Argentina, in October, 1997.

Violent behavior has a double meaning in zoology. First, it is used as a means to get sustenance, and second, to express power. In one case, it means action; in the other, just a sign to convey the threat of potential action. Predators must resort to violence in order to get food, and dominance is an essential part of success that is ensured by displaying force. Roars, bellows and howls are examples of acoustic violence in Nature used to exhibit strength in order to intimidate, subdue and then seize the prey.

Interestingly, Nature offers few examples of actual injury due solely to sound. The biological role of acoustic waves is seemingly restricted to conveying different kinds of information. In the case of human beings, such information is astoundingly complex, and so is the acoustic code used to communicate it. The ability to discriminate the subtle nuances present in the vocal signal and extract meaningful and accurate information requires a fine-tuned sense of hearing. This, in turn, makes the ear an extremely delicate organ. Whereas very few natural sounds are loud enough to be really dangerous, human-made sounds (either intended or residual ones) can easily reach noxious levels, which is further aggravated by customarily long exposure intervals.

Human beings have added, consequently, a new dimension to natural acoustic violence: the ability to cause physical injury. Even if we have so far considered only the effects on the ear, long-term exposure to noise has many other well-known consequences that are thoroughly covered elsewhere³.

Now let us focus on the primitive use of acoustic violence to express power. The habit to raise the voice or even shout to impose one’s point of view, opinion or will is, perhaps, the first and most frequent example. It is, indeed, the human expression of animals’ stentorian roars. Hunting horns and the fanfare-like cornet or trumpet tunes spurring soldiers on to battle are two examples in which an artificial instrument is introduced in order to increase loudness. Unamplified voice has a limited reach, especially outdoors, hence the need to resort to louder sound devices. Besides, the ability of proper tunes to arouse strong feelings has proven particularly suitable to this aim. Furthermore, the exposure to loud noises such as drum-like ones, even for short periods of time, cause an increase in the secretion of certain hormones (such as adrenaline and noradrenaline) that raise heart rate and blood pressure and prepare psychologically to fight⁴. Loud noise has been used by the ancient Chinese to torture condemned criminals to death, and in certain cases it is used by the police to force assaulters to surrender. (By the way, it is not surprising that people suffering from noise pollution often refers to it as "a torture".)

So far we have detailed some instances of intended acoustic violence, i.e., acoustic violence intentionally used with a definite aim. The advent of primitive technologies, such as metallurgy (back in the Bronze and Iron Ages), may well have been the beginning of a long-lasting tradition of occupational acoustic violence. In fact, one of the first documented cases of occupational hearing loss is that of blacksmiths in the Middle Ages. Their deafness was correctly associated with the loud noise at the smithy. Although noise control techniques have improved dramatically over the last decades, the so-called economic feasibility is frequently the prime concern, to the detriment of workers’ health and welfare. As a noteworthy example, we can cite the following words by noted Dr. Aram Glorig: "It is obvious (...) that if we are to assume no risk of hearing handicap whatsoever, the noise exposure levels must be 80 dBA or lower. It is also known that attaining such levels in industry with machines as presently designed is economically impractical. Thus, the community must accept a compromise and assume a certain risk that is consistent with that compromise".⁵ As a matter of fact, such a compromise (as currently stated by occupational acts in many countries, including the US) guarantees that an 18% of workers will experience noise induced hearing impairment after a forty-year occupational exposure. We like it or not, this is the prevailing approach as regards to noise control in industry. Although almost blurred, we can still recognize the metaphor: the power holder subdues the weak ones by means of noise.

We get now to community acoustic violence. Traffic and aircraft noises are the main expressions of this kind of violence, and though much has been done, much more remains to be done. According to the EC Green Paper on Future Noise Policy, noise emission from individual cars has been reduced by 85% and the noise from aircraft, by 90%, since 1970. However, as a result of the growth and spread of traffic in space and time, no significant improvements have been detected as regards to total exposure to environmental noise.⁶ Noteworthy, to date there is no widespread approach to control traffic noise as a collective phenomenon.⁷ Most local or federal regulations fix limits on individual noise emissions but do not even consider the effect of multiple vehicles circulating along a street at the same time. Once more, the economic issue is the prime concern in the design of noise policies. Individual transportation should de discouraged to be gradually replaced by public transportation, which may undergo better controls regarding both technical conditions to circulate and schedule. Moreover, the use of individual vehicles implies not only noise pollution but air pollution as well. The use of a car to transport just one or two persons is a highly inefficient way to use natural resources (particularly, of energy, whose byproducts are known to be environmentally not friendly).

Recreational noise is another form of acoustic violence. A gradual increase of what could be called the "mean cultural sound level" has been steadily taking place during the last decades. The mean cultural sound level is the average sound level that is deemed necessary or adequate for a cultural event, show or performance, either public (cinema, concert, discotheque) or private (parties, home theatre, TV). This increase has several reasons, such as:

1) The increase of environmental noise, as a consequence of traffic, industry, and commercial, educational and sport activities.

2) Sociocusis, i.e., presbycusis (progressive hearing impairment with age) due to the exposure to loud social noise for many years.

3) The sociocultural pressure exerted on people by those who control the show and recreation business, particularly through the "prestige" allegedly implied by high sound levels.

Let us make some further comments on this points.

1) Thanks to high-fidelity audio equipment that modern technology has introduced in the market at very affordable prices, the public has got in touch with high-quality audio, and has learned thus to listen "well". Environmental noise disturb this listening, so there is a natural tendency to resort to the psychoacoustic effect called masking, increasing the volume so that music masks the noise. This allows to enjoy sound quality while background noise is made virtually unaudible.

2) Measurements made in primitive human settlings in the Sudan in the sixties by Rosen and his team have shown that presbycusis-related hearing loss was far less significant than in the case of large cities in industrialized countries,⁸ suggesting that environmental noise even if not so intense as industrial or occupational noise, as well as other concurrent factors, has a long-term effect on hearing which may start as early as the age of twenty. This early hearing loss makes youngsters raise the volume of the music in order to derive the same auditory sensation they would get without such impairment.

3) In our society there is a close relationship between money (i.e., economic dominance) and prestige. As there is also an obvious connection between money and the possibility to afford high-power audio equipment, we can easily arrive at the conclusion that the possession (and the use) of such devices confers prestige to their "fortunate" owner. This is exploited by all those involved in the business: show managers, professional and consumer audio gear manufacturers and retailers. This, in turn, creates a great demand of unnecessary and even dangerous consumer goods. The layperson often ignores almost everything about the risks involved in the irresponsible use of such devices. Besides hearing risk, we must mention noise addiction, by which consumers need compulsively to feed their ears with sounds, either music or background noise--it does not matter (not to mention background piped music used as noise in most public places).

We can conclude, once more, that the powerful ones (those who can control the decisions of others by controlling the mass media, for instance) exploit acoustic violence in order to keep their prevalence. In this case, acoustic violence has acquired a new significance. It helps to perpetuate the endless din of a modern and acoustically sick society, which in turn masks, almost literally, the actual roots of the deep injustice implicit in the terribly asymmetric distribution of whealth.

In the preceding paragraphs, we have tried to describe some instances of the concept of acoustic violence, as well as its dialectical relationship with power and its exercise. To finish this article, we would like to make reference to some of the recommendations of the recent Conferences on Acoustic Violence, held in Rosario, Argentina, in 1997 and 1998. In both meetings, which were organized by the Scientific Interdisciplinary Committee on Ecology and Noise, there was special emphasis on the potential value of preventative action in the fight against acoustic violence. This includes effective regulations, public information and education. Regulations should be, first of all, of a preventative rather than punitive character. Most urban noise ordinances devote many articles to fix maximum sound levels allowable in several zoning districts, but they do not state how conditions will be created such that those limits are feasible or even consistent. Education policies regarding noise pollution and sound hygiene are usually absent, and so are research policies. Funding, being as important as it is for the success of an ordinance, is seldom mentioned in any article, leaving the entire responsibility of its assignment to the executive authority’s will (and possibilities). Interestingly, while many ordinances include fines as punishment for offences, the destination of this revenue is not clearly stated. An important percentage should be devoted to fund noise-related research and preventative activities, for example to provide the enforcement office with state of the art measurement equipment. These and other ideas have been written into a Draft Noise Ordinance that we presented at the second edition of the Conference.⁹

As to public information, it was stressed that any toy, walkman, audio device or household appliance capable of producing dangerous sound levels should come with an accompanying leaflet with information on possible risks. It was accepted without any doubt the utmost importance of education regarding acoustic violence in order to achieve a high degree of social awareness of this problem, which is the first and most significant step towards its solution.

Next Conference, the Third International Multidisciplinary Conference on Acoustic Violence will take place in Rosario, Argentina, in year 2000 (the exact date is not confirmed yet), and it is expected to be the most ambitious of all three, with lecturers from several parts of the world and many interesting and exciting activities.