Noise Emissions

When I came to the U.S., I wondered every day how people tolerate the continuous noise everywhere. Loud cars, air conditioners running all the time, trucks big and small on and off the campus... only very rarely is one of those particularly atrocious transport vehicles on the campus replaced by an electric one. Somehow, silence is not a value here.

(In fact, during my last visit to British Columbia in 2008 I invested two or three days just looking for a place that has no other noises but nature itself. It didn't work. Even in the most remote valleys I tried, there was always at least the hum of some distant plane.)

So I wondered whether there is any country anywhere that has noise emissions regulations, any rules that would govern how machines and devices are to be constructed in a noise-minimizing fashion, sanctioning their operation licenses. Indeed, Germany (and probably some other countries, too) has some laws that regulate noise immissions for workers and in habitated areas (workers have to wear protective gear, and home residents can force noise sources to be shut down), but this doesn't protect the average pedestrian on the street. I don't know of any place that has laws that apply to the engineering side of the equation - making devices quiet before they're built, instead of banning loud ones.

Now it seems that even places like Kenia have noticed that people need to be protected from excessive noise levels. I would not be surprised if neither Germany nor other European places, not to mention the U.S., actually cared about or legislated noise reduction in public places.