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Discussion keeps the world turning. This is Roundtable.
China's action against noise is gaining momentum. From urban design to noise monitoring, the goal is simple. Quiet nights, peaceful sleep, and healthier communities. Let's talk about quiet communities and why your sleep might just depend on them. Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Roundtable. I'm He Yang. For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Ding Heng in the studio. First on today's show.
A recent report says China has implemented rules to establish quiet communities to tackle noise pollution. And now there are over 2,000 of them nationwide. April the 30th marks International Noise Awareness Day, a time to reflect on how excessive noise affects not only our environment, but also our health and well-being. So what exactly makes a quiet community in China?
Well, a quiet community refers to a residential compound that through noise pollution control measures tries to achieve certain quality standards in terms of the sound environment, for example, and its residents.
are generally highly satisfied with the environment in terms of the sound, etc. It provides a peaceful living environment for residents to live, to study, and to work. Now, there were some more specific basic standards, actually, which include
For example, it cannot be in a situation where multiple households time and time again complain about the same noise problem, the same noise pollution problem for a long time. Also, the community needs to carry out noise monitoring, for example,
where the community is located, there is a sound environment functional zone, kind of like a demonstration area, I guess. So basically, the sound environment of the residential community should comply with the noise limit requirements of the functional zone.
and the community needs to establish a noise complaint and dispute medication, not medication, but mediation mechanism. So I think the background information here is that China amended its law on the prevention and control of noise pollution back in 2022.
adding the construction of quiet communities into this national law for the first time. And then the Ministry of Ecology and Environmental Protection basically started to promote the construction of the quiet community from 2023. For example, it drafted a guideline last year saying this will become a universal standard
For residential areas in China by the year 2035, that's quite ambitious, honestly speaking. So we're not just talking about, you know, your upstairs neighbor being too noisy, children, if they have kids upstairs, this one.
A lot of people don't like that sound, right? If they live downstairs. No, thank you. Yeah, not just that. We're talking about outside sound sources too, right? And that could be people outside, perhaps socializing, being too noisy at night, maybe construction or things like that. There's a lot of things taken into consideration here, yeah? Yeah, and also this includes, for example, if there's...
or some, you know, what do you call these? Establishments that earn money, but depends on nightlife. And then it could be a really big source of noise for people as well. Sure. And especially probably when the weather gets warmer in the summertime, a lot of places will have outdoor patios, right? Where people can sit and enjoy themselves. And when they're enjoying themselves, they're talking and that can be a little loud. All of this information leads me to believe you talked about the,
the, the law on the prevention and control of noise pollution that came out in 2022, that prior to now noise pollution, I guess, was an issue. How young would you say that you've, you've heard about this in the past, uh, noise pollution being an issue in, in communities? Um, we have heard complaints about this in recent years, but like you guys cited in 2022, that was the landmark year when, uh,
the construction of quiet communities has been included into the law. And it shows that even from a top-down approach, then this is highly important. And this is actually quite essential to the well-being of people and the happiness of local residents because nobody wants to come home to
you know, all that noise, especially after bedtime. Sure, yeah. And from the Xinhua report, that's exactly what this initiative wants to do. It's to create these residential areas with noise levels that are comfortable enough that people can improve the quality of their sleep for the people that live there. It's one of the most common environmental complaints
in urban areas. Also the ministry, they've expanded their noise monitoring network. This is interesting. They installed over 4,000 automatic monitoring stations across 338 cities at or above the prefecture level by the end of 2024. So that's another big measure.
things, actual things being put out in place to monitor noise levels. Yeah, these are pretty elaborate noise detection systems that might only come in a small machine, in the form of a small machine, but they're very important to monitor and detect noise.
noise level, especially see if they have surpassed the dangerous level, so to speak. This is what they did in Paris, too. I found it on Bloomberg from 2022. They called them the Medusa devices, named for their resemblance to a jellyfish, because Medusa apparently is a jellyfish in French. Yeah.
they were developed by a certain nonprofit to identify drivers and motorcycle riders who were causing problems in the city. Those devices, those Medusa devices are equipped with multi-directional cameras and then they have a dangling little battery of eight microphones. And then the sensors, what they do is they hone in on sources of extreme noise and then they photograph the license plates of the offenders.
And in 2023, they started fining drivers 135 euros if their vehicles broke the noise levels. That's a pretty expensive ticket. And I guess that expensive ticket is meant to be a major deterrence for drivers of cars and motorcycles to keep their noise levels down. Yeah.
And here, I guess we need to talk about this day that He Yang mentioned earlier, this International Noise Awareness Day, known in short as INAD. It was established by this U.S.-based Center for Hearing and Communication to raise awareness about this issue. And since its inception in the mid-1990s, this particular date has grown to include
participants in basically every state in America, that's the US situation, as well as for groups in countries on virtually every continent across the globe. So I guess here there are some health related questions like why do we care so much about those unwanted noises, right?
I guess in the short run, noises, they can cause emotional stress. This is a well-established fact. And stress in general is hazardous to our health. And
In the long run, I guess, noises can cause hearing losses. And hearing losses is in and of itself very, very detrimental to our pursuit of a quality life. Noise is one of the leading causes of hearing loss among the 466 million people around the world living with a moderate hearing.
to severe hearing loss. And while noise exposure, and we don't, I think we don't think about this, right? It's just not at the forefront of our minds that the city noise, not just here in Beijing or wherever around the world,
The city noise, if it's loud enough, it can do some serious damage to people's hearing and it doesn't really matter how old they are. Research has also shown that young people are increasingly at risk due to recreational activities, including music.
The WHO estimates that about 1.1 billion young people between the ages of 12 and 35 are at risk of hearing loss due to exposure to noise in recreational settings. So this is a big deal and it's worth a lot of attention. Oh, yes. And there is one alarming report raised by the BBC about traffic noise might even lead to deaths.
What's that about? Yeah, it's from the World Health Organization. They say that they're not just us, but they say that there are an estimated 300 heart attacks and 30 deaths a year just from traffic noise in Barcelona. Across Europe, noise is linked to 12,000 early deaths a year. It's millions of cases of severely disturbed sleep as well as serious noise annoyance that can escalate.
have impacts on mental health. And then there's the snowball effect too, right? We go back to the hearing loss point that we just made. Well, if you, and research has shown this, and there's a growing body of research that links hearing loss with social isolation and depression and an increased risk of falls, and even the onset of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementias.
So what the point is here is that it's not just noise, is it? It's a whole other slew of problems that can come where the root problem could be the noise. Absolutely. And I think it's really important to have this point of caution here.
impart it to people because, you know, if you can prevent it, just like any major health issue out there, you know, preventative effort, I think is really important here. But also just to make it clear for everyone, how loud is too loud? That is bad for our hearing.
Well, I guess the majority of the sounds that most of us are exposed to on a day-to-day basis are actually at a safe level. But when the sound reaches a certain limit,
They can cause damage to our ears. Think of all those noises associated with certain, for example, kitchen appliances, a loud subway train, power tools, or a rock concert. All these noises are probably too much. I think from a more physical or scientific sense,
The unit that we use to measure sound intensity is the dB, decibel, I think it's pronounced as. 0 decibel is the softest sound that a healthy human ear can hear. So basically, I think 1 to 10 decibel are the lowest limit of hearing.
When it's about 10 to 20, it's extremely quiet. 30 to 40, very quiet. 40 to 50, quiet. 50 to 60, relatively quiet. When it's above 70, it's relatively noisy, noisy, very noisy, unbearable. I'll put that in a context for you. Yeah, you said it exactly right. The
the experts seem to agree that prolonged exposure to noise above 70 decibels can be harmful to our hearing. So back to what Ding-Hung was saying about the lower levels and mid-levels and higher levels.
Around 20 decibels, that's a ticking watch. That's pretty safe to listen to all day. It might get annoying after a while. A library is about 40 decibels. Your average office work would be about 60 decibels. A vacuum cleaner, and this is where we get into the dangerous levels. A vacuum cleaner is 80 decibels. A motorbike would be 100 decibels. So again, back to that point, if you have prognosis,
Right. And also for all of us out there, so many people are
have the latest edition of earplugs, fancy headphones or whatnot. And we know a lot of young people like to wear them. It almost insulates you from the outer environment and you make a statement that I am in my own world and we should not put on the headphones for
How long would you say? We talked about this. We did. Didn't we on Roundtable? A few weeks, a few months ago. Gosh, what was the number? It wasn't a high number. It was within a couple of hours a day, I want to say. Don't quote me on that number. I think it was less than an hour for sure. Was it really? Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, some people like to listen to their music at lower levels, but people like
me. I like to crank it up when I listen to, even my headphone volume right now is probably too loud for the average person, but that's just the way I like it. So if you are like me, then make sure you're limiting your headphone time per day. Yeah, I have to say I've lost so many, is it called eardrums, during this job because we do so much editing and like for example, when now we're doing this live show, well
Well, actually, only Steve and I have the headphones on, and I think they're a bit too loud at the safe level. But anyhow, there are lots of preventative measures we can take. Yeah, and one of those is limiting your noise exposure, because as we just described, exposure to everyday sounds can cause permanent hearing loss if the volume is too
too high and it's up to you to protect your hearing. So keep your volume down to a safe level, protect your ears. Also educate your children about noise. I don't think parents think about this very often, right? There's so many other parenting things to think about. Noise is probably pretty low on the list of concerns for kids. But yeah, teach your kids to
to keep the volume down too, because kids nowadays, they're looking at screens a lot. They're playing video games a lot. They're listening to music a lot. So they're wearing headphones a lot of the time too. And I guess for adults, you can also own, not only adults, but basically everybody, you can make annual hearing screening as part of your overall health check program, I guess. And this kind of program is very...
simplistic, I guess. You only need five minutes with a licensed audiologist and that's all. So when there is any suggestion, follow up with a complete evaluation and the recommendation.
And when you expect yourself to be in a relatively noisy environment, you always need to remember to bring hearing protection to avoid all those unnecessary damage, right? Yeah, this is really funny. Sorry to quickly just jump in to support your point, actually. One of my friends who...
he's a sound specialist. So his work revolves engineering, sound engineer, yes. And then when we go to concerts and stuff, he always plugs in earplugs. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, we're at a concert. We're here to enjoy music, but you have your earplugs in. He's like, wait, is this too loud? This is not good for you. And he very sweetly
He was very sweet and he pulled out a pair for me and I realized, oh, wow, this is actually important. You know, this is good for your hearing health. Yeah. And when we look at the situation here in China in terms of noise pollution, and this is definitely an area that we've seen growing awareness in. Could you offer us a reality check on that?
What are the top polluters and where are we now? Yeah, this is from a Hunan Daily report from late 2024. And it was the data was released from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment from 2023.
and the data said that noise-related disturbances accounted for almost 62% of all complaints received through the National Environmental Complaint and Reporting Platform, and that ranked first among all types of environmental pollution issues. The director of the Atmospheric Environment Division at the Hunan Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment said that complaints related to social life noises
Made up 80% of the total in the province, primarily originating from commercial, like you said, Hooyang, commercial businesses. Catering, which is interesting. Entertainment, that makes sense. Also cultural activity venues. And then this one.
This one's tough if you're living nearby. Home renovations. These noises, all of those together, often disrupt people's peace and frequently lead to neighborhood disputes. And those are never fun either. But with the neighborhood construction, especially if your neighbor is refurbishing and, huh, this could be connected to the second topic of discussion today. Oh, yeah, right. Home refurbishment. Yeah.
In China, we have very strict rules and actually either contact your neighborhood or your property management company, or you can just go in yourself with the rules on paper.
or on your smartphone equipped and just show them the writing. Because I've actually seen many successful cases of, you know, just showing them the rules and then your neighbor's construction team has to comply. And this is very well known in Chinese society by now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And drilling was this kind of loud machines when you're renovating your house. I think this kind of activity is only allowed from 8 to 12 a.m.,
And 2 to 6 p.m. in the afternoon on workday, Monday to Friday. Yes, everybody should know that. And the law is on your – the regulation is on your side, and you just have to utilize it, my friend. That being said, construction noise complaints accounted for 13%, mostly caused by construction machinery operation, particularly in densely populated areas.
And that affects people's rest as well. In that case, though, I guess we're not talking about home renovations. We're talking about outside, probably bigger construction projects. Yeah. And they say because those projects are not privately held projects. They are conducted by some government or some state-owned enterprises. Sometimes they say these rules do not apply to them.
That's the problem. I personally experienced with my own residential community last year. I called the Beijing mayor hotline, but nothing gets resolved. That's unfortunate. That's quite ironic. Was it super early in the morning or very late at night that the construction was happening? They work extended to long hours during the whole day and during the whole national day holiday. Oh, no.
Working nonstop. Well, that was really, really crazy. Well, when it's the public organizations, then in theory they should...
well, comply with the regulations stricter. That's what the Chinese kind of mind would expect, really. Yeah. Just one more statistic for you quickly. Transportation, not too much, not really a problem in terms of noise. Only three and a half percent of the complaints were related to that. And that kind of makes sense. I know that I live in a kind of a
quiet residential neighborhood. There are busier, noisier parts of Beijing, I think. But going to sleep at night, I can't even remember one time that a car driving by or traffic caused any sleep disruptions at all. So that doesn't seem to be as much of an issue nationwide. Well, when you look at overall in our country, how are the noise pollution problems being tackled? Yeah.
Well, I guess the national situation, we can take a look at one particular example. It's not a national, but more like a city. Particular example happening in city in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang province. Basically, there is a local garbage transfer station next to a residential community in the city. It was generating a lot of noises during its
waste transfer operation, thereby leading to repeated complaints from local residents. And I guess in last year, the local government established the city's first ever so-called silent eco-friendly transfer facility at this particular site trying to resolve this issue.
So according to a local official from the local Bureau of Ecology and Environment, they have installed rubber pads at the contact points between the waste bins and the vehicles. That's a good idea. And basically, according to reporters who have personally made visits to that site, they
The idea is that inside the transfer facility, the floor is covered with a layer of rubber padding and the
The walls are constructed with multi-layer composite soundproofing materials. In addition, when garbage trucks enter that very facility, an intelligent soundproof rolling door equipped with some infrared vehicle detection will automatically close.
That's how the whole system works. And I think it's been working well. Sounds like it would be a good recording studio too. If the management team wanted to start a podcast or something. Yeah, something like that.
The other things they've done, this is a good one, they can harness information technology so that they can trace and that they can monitor noise sources. And this has become a really powerful tool for cities to fight against noise pollution. In some areas, the application of computer simulation technology can generate noise maps.
They do this in one particular bureau in Jiangsu province, and it makes urban noise not only visible, but also manageable. So here's what I mean by visible. This is unlike traditional decibel level sound maps. The data behind this map, it's not drawn from monitoring stations. Instead, it's generated through systems that analyze
analyze public complaints and that results in a map that better captures public sentiment and reflects residents' real experiences with noise issues. So compare that to the Medusa system that they're using in Paris where they're using cameras and microphones to capture specific sound moments. They're capturing here where people are, pardon me, where they're complaining the most and they're mapping the noise problems through the complaints. So,
And that's a really smart idea because then they can get a general idea of which areas are having the biggest problems with noise. Wow. I wonder how this whole system is working. Is it like when there are more complaints in one specific area, then the color will change, will become darker? How did you know that? It gets darker on the map. If there are more than 30 complaints within areas,
Yes.
And we're also seeing that the country has recently raised the noise-canceling standards for residential projects. That means the requirement is higher, isn't it here?
Yeah, I think according to a professor of architecture from Tsinghua University, he says the new standards are significantly raising the standards for residential noise control, thereby bringing them close to those adopted already available in those developed countries. Well, that's definitely a concern.
Something that those who want a good night's sleep, which is all of us, would, I think, firmly stand behind.