Mumbai, Delhi too loud for comfort

Indian metros are not just the nosiest in the country but in the world as well and the high decibel levels are a potential health risk. Mumbai leads the loud pack followed by Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 24, 2011, 01:25:10 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Indian metros are not just the nosiest in the country but in the world as well and the high decibel levels are a potential health risk.

Mumbai leads the loud pack followed by Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore. The ITO in Delhi and Bandra in Mumbai are nosier than the busiest parts of London, New York and Beijing.

Average day time noise in seven big Indian cities is much higher than the national standard of 65 decibel (dB) ampere.

Noise above 80dB can cause hearing impairment, especially among children, say the new World Health Organisation guidelines. Above 30dB can cause sleeping disorders, effect spoken communication and cardiovascular activity. It can also trigger negative social behaviour.

“Vehicles are the biggest contributors to high noise level in Indian cities. Constant honking aggravates the problem,” said SP Gautam, chairperson of pollution watchdog the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).

Most places where high levels of noise were recorded were next to busy roads, according to the real-time data collected from 35 locations in seven cities.

The findings were released Wednesday, a decade after noise standard was notified in the country. "Noise-level testing of vehicles is not mandatory in India like in the West," said Gautam. Deafening

For environment minister Jairam Ramesh, the findings are a new weapon to push cities to streamline traffic and adhere to the 65dB mark. "As the data is available real time, the states can devise traffic plans for actual time intervention," he said.

The CPCB had set up noise-monitoring stations in seven cities and these would be expanded to 25 cities within a year. The number of stations in metros will also be increased.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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