What I find to be more of a travesty is the complete disregard for ear safety and hearing loss prevention. Chainsaws at 116+ dB and hearing protection rated at 30 dB when it really only gives 11.5 dB reduction. Hearing tests only going up to 8 kHz when we have hearing up to 22 kHz.
So most machines, concerts, work environments are causing hearing loss and damage, the hearing protection is advertised to give protection 2 to 3 times higher than it provides and the medical system tells everyone their hearing tests are perfect but they only test the bottom third or half of our hearing range.
Never forget that the US had regulations on this back in 1972!
https://ballotpedia.org/Noise_Control_Act_of_1972
In a statement announcing his decision to sign Noise Control Act and other bills, Nixon said:
[3][4]
While a number of municipal governments have moved to control the rising levels of noise in our country--particularly in major urban centers--many of the most significant sources of noise move in interstate commerce and can be effectively regulated only at the Federal level. The new act will enable the Environmental Protection Agency to set limits on the amount of noise permitted both from trucks, buses, and railroad trains operating in interstate commerce and from a variety of newly manufactured products such as jackhammers and compressors, automobiles, motorcycles, snowmobiles, motors and engines.
[5] "
—President Richard Nixon
[4
EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus said of the law, "We now have the authority to come to grips with an environmental problem that affects millions of people. The previous lack of this power represented a serious gap in our environmental authorities."
[6]
The EPA set a 24-hour exposure level of 70 decibels as the level that would prevent measurable hearing loss in individuals over a lifetime.
But who needs regulations, right?
Or the EPA for that matter?
I believe the Act was reversed in the eighties, under Reagan. Economy first?
About its demise:
EPA has a handful of noise rules on the books, such as a limit on noise from motorcycles. They all date back decades, though, because the White House cut funding for the program under President Reagan, and it has never been restored.
The Office of Noise Abatement and Control got the ax in the early 1980s, a time -- not too different from today -- when the economy was in the gutter and many on Capitol Hill wanted to slash away at red tape. The noise rules were slammed by critics like syndicated columnist James Kilpatrick, who called it "bureaucracy gone berserk."
"Metaphorically speaking, if you will forgive me, this is garbage," Kilpatrick wrote at the time.
Critics of federal noise rules have argued that state laws and local ordinances can handle noisy lawnmowers, air conditioners and highway traffic on their own. If the noise becomes a nuisance, the police can start writing tickets, they say.
But in the past few years in Europe, new empirical studies have led health experts to pay a new level of attention to noise pollution. The European Union already has a directive ordering local governments to reduce noise, and last year, a panel of environmental officials from six European countries ranked traffic noise as the continent's second-most pressing threat to public health, after air pollution.
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