Blamey Saunders audiologist Chamini Sedara delves into an issue we all contend with in our daily lives – background noise :

I recently had a visit to my daughter’s school for parent–teacher interviews. The school has new modern class rooms which were built with the “experience” rather than the “appearance” in mind. In other words, the architects built the rooms with the sense of sound in mind.

However, the parent-teacher interviews were held in a huge open area, where average noise level exceed what I estimated to be about 65-70 decibels. I thought that was poorly planned and saw many parents and teachers struggling to hear each other within their allocated time of about ten to fifteen minutes. I tried hard to tune my ears to ‘directional mode’, but I was extremely tired when I left the school.

My memory line went back to 1983, when I started primary school.  Many, if not all teachers had, or were reputed to have, a strap or a cane that was applied to the hand or buttocks of students who needed discipline when they stepped out of line. For this reason our class rooms were sound treated, even though we had poorly designed classroom environments.

Recent research shows that poorly designed classroom environments are putting students at risk of missing 50 percent of what their teachers say.

Besides being unable to hear what is being said, the student behaviour and study results are negatively impacted by noise.

Teachers are also suffering from the noise they are exposed to. A study found the average noise level in classrooms to be 65 decibels, a level that was found to affect the teachers’ heart rate.

Chronic exposure to 65 dB is seen as the threshold for possible noise-induced risk of heart attack.

The study also reveals that teachers are losing significant life expectancy by teaching in noisy environments day after day.

As a clinician at Blamey Saunders hears, the most common complaint I hear from hearing aid users is “background noise”.  I’m not surprised!  The world we live today is very noisy and loud, and the modern architectural environments make the situation even worse.

Further, some people experience sleeping problems due to noise in urban areas.  Likewise, hospitals were not built with the sound factor in mind; patients have difficulties sleeping or resting with the noise levels they are exposed to at night.

As Elaine explained in her blog , new modern restaurants are reportedly the worst places when it’s come to sound design. Modern open plan homes and offices are also badly affected.

It’s time to raise the awareness for “sound design”.  Sound can negatively impact our overall quality of life – our health, our social behaviour and productivity.

It’s time for architects to use their ears because we need space to hear.