Noise is often thought to be blaring speakers or the constant hum of machines. But a mere conversation with a colleague can be classified as noise as it may be disruptive to one’s productivity.

“Noise on a whole can disrupt your disposition in that, depending on what is happening, it can make you irritable, uncomfortable, and also noise can be a distractor so that you don’t perform well. The other aspect of it is where noise is of a certain level it can cause damage to the system,” Coordinator for Hearing Services at the Jamaica Association for the Deaf, June Coward-Fearon said in an interview with the Jamaica Observer.

A normal, human speaking voice is approximately 70 decibels (dB), when measured. When speaking at an elevated level, the decibel range averages around 76 decibels. According to www.reference.com “an individual who talks very loudly would have a decibel range of 82 dB, while someone who shouts would reach levels of around 88 dB”.

Coward-Fearon noted that sounds at about 85 decibels — the equivalent of road traffic — is considered “safe”; while above 90 decibels (usually in industrial assembly lines) is considered “serious” and would require the use of protection.

“So it is important then that various workplaces be assessed, be measured to know the degree or the intensity of the sounds that their workers are exposed to. Sometimes what happens is that this is taken for granted and, after a period of time, the person loses their hearing, or hearing sensitivity, [so] some sounds become a little muffled,” she told the Sunday Observer.

Coward-Fearon described talking, machines, and air conditioning units as bearable noise in an office. She cited the airport, factories and the kitchen as examples of work environments that tend to have large volumes of sound.

“Entertainment is nice, but entertainment is also noisy. Sometimes you go to concerts you wonder if the engineers are hearing because if you sit at certain places, you can’t stay there because it is blaring, and then you have that ringing sound after that event. The activities that one exposes themselves to become important and one has to look and say what are the implications of these, both long term and short term.”

Though companies ought to have programmes that educate employees on sound levels they’re exposed to and the consequences, Coward-Fearon encouraged that workers take responsibility for their hearing. She suggested that persons in entertainment wear plugs and filters to preserve their hearing.

“So [it] becomes important that persons take their own listening ability or sensitivity into question because when people go for check-ups, you hardly finding anybody doing hearing assessment; [but] if there is a problem or if the persons requiring a medical to be done insist that your hearing is going to have a part to play in the whole shebang of stuff, then you should do it; other than that, nothing,” she stated.

“Once you’re exposed to the noise you’re supposed to be in it for a certain period of time and then given breaks, so that the ear doesn’t become traumatised fully throughout the eight hours. So once you’re over like 100 dB, definitely you’re not going to be staying in over a 100 zone for eight hours straight. It might be eight hours, but in parts,” she said, adding that the precautionary actions taken are dependent on the level of sound being emitted.

Being in a constantly noisy environment, according to Coward-Fearon, also depletes a person’s appreciation for silence — an element she stressed is necessary. She reasoned that it is during “quiet times” that people are truly relaxed.

“We don’t have down times, we don’t like down times. We always have to have some kind of noise around us or it feels a little [odd]. Somebody said to me ‘It feels a little eerie, I can hear my heartbeat. It’s like I can hear the blood rushing through my body and I’m hearing all kinds of sounds that I never pay much attention to’ and I’m saying, you need to have some quiet time,” she noted.

“So if you’re working in noise it’s advised that you take yourself away; quiet time is necessary for more reasons than one. Constant exposure can cause damage.”

The hearing coordinator told the Sunday Observer that noise causes a high frequency hearing loss.

“So words with ‘s’ and ‘f’, ‘th’ will be problematic from time to time, depending on the speaker and depending on the environment,” she explained. “So if you’re in a noisy environment it’s gonna be hard to deduce words so, therefore, it’s important for you to be able to see the speaker,s face and then you put two and two together and you say ‘oh that is what he is saying,’ using contextual clues. You want to be able to be independent of clues or any other support, be able to hear and be able to follow through with that conversation.”