NOISE MAKES YOU LOOK OLDER!

Hee! Hee! Bet that got your attention — if you are over 30 that is. Nothing could be more unjust, but until the revolution ...

But this is an Earth Day and International Noise Awareness Day column (the former observed April 22, the latter on April 26), and how something as emotionally as well as physically damaging as noise in schools, hospitals, work places and, above all, our homes, can be so ignored by save the Earth/planet leaders, medics and elected officials whose first duty it is to protect public welfare — health. Maybe repeat that, please.

While what we breathe is still polluted, the city Health Department recently released a report saying that New York’s air is getting cleaner. That’s because great attention was, and continues, to be paid. And yet noise-related calls to 311 reportedly get little remedial action even though they are more about noise invading the home, especially noisy neighbors, than any other 311 lament?

But these desperate pleas for help don’t go public and may not even be privately shared. But the home invasion kind has never been a hot media topic. The research is there but, hey, if the damage done were household knowledge, some of us tenants might have to put down noise-muffling rugs or tone down our stereos to reduce noise transmitted to neighboring apartments. So there’s a lot of resistance and even in a city of mostly multiple dwelling places.

Ah, but there’s even resistance from landlords, managing agents and co-op and condo boards as the East 79th Neighborhood Association once found out in a most important anti-noisy homes project overseen by Dr. Arline Bronzaft, chair of the Noise Committee at the city’s Council on the Environment.

But the majority of Upper East Side landlords, managing agents and co-op and condo boards refused to distribute a questionnaire to their residents which related to their experience with neighbor and other disturbing noise coming into their homes. A number of individual-related laments prompted this thoughtful study and action to bring unnecessary home noise out in the open and make helpful suggestions to overcome or reduce it. Again, only a few landlords, managing agents and co-op condo boards complied.

As Bronzaft says of her noisy-neighbor-related work. it is often the lack of sound-muffling floor covering, even though it’s required by most apartment house leases and house rules. And it’s often a “silence thing” among the noise-afflicted and an “ignorance thing” among those whose first duty it is to protect public safety and welfare. To my knowledge, sound-proofing is not a priority even in new luxury high-rise condo construction.

Rather typical are friends who worry about who will move in the co-op above them now that their quiet elder neighbors have moved to L.A. to be near their sons. Again, how this needs to be talked about. But unlike construction and restaurant//bar home invasion noise victims, afflicted individuals don’t have group support and so they don’t even report it so as not to cause bad neighbor relations. And you men, don’t think it’s somehow “unmanly” to say you’ve got a noisy neighbor or a problem with noise pollution in general.

Attention must be paid. These stories must be shared on both a private land and public level, especially the latter. Yes, keep calling 311 but more important repeatedly call elected officials, your police precinct and community board listed in this paper’s Useful Contacts column.

And hey, why, with somewhat impaired hearing, am I the only one holding my ears when an emergency vehicle blasts by? Non-emergency horn-blowing has to go. So do noisy restaurants, movie house sound systems. It’s too noisy EVERYWHERE.

Earth Day and International Noise Awareness Day must first protect the places we live and spend the most time. Overcoming noise pollution, in general, must become a top priority concern. It can be done if enough of us try - if enough of us try.

dewingbetter@aol.com