WITH THE END OF THE COLD WAR, EUROPE NOW FACES WALL OF NOISE

Continent sees growing number of construction projects along with
increasing traffic. Experts warn of ill effects of high decibels.
By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer

BERLIN--Near the A-114 highway onramp in the crowded eastern Berlin
district of Prenzlauerberg, it's easy to understand why harried locals long
for the peaceful isolation of the Communist era.

Drivers in Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs race their engines as they idle at
stoplights. Eighteen-wheelers ferrying freight to the center of this bustling
metropolis screech to a crawl to negotiate their perpetual backups.
Jackhammers and air compressors at construction sites rattle and hiss in an
earsplitting chorus punctuated by blaring horns, clanking trams and
Soviet-made aircraft roaring overhead.

In the more than nine years since the Berlin Wall fell, eastern areas of
this once and future German capital have been scaffolded and road-blocked for
seemingly endless renovations. And on both sides of the now-unified city,
traffic has grown exponentially as more drivers and truckers from across
Europe use Berlin as a through route.

That has jacked up the noise level at dozens of high-traffic sites here to
levels that exceed accepted safe limits and are contributing to the growing
volume of noise pollution on the Continent.

Noise is a problem in all major cities in Europe, and environmentalists and
social scientists contend that the shrieks and roars of urban life may be
more than just an irritation.

German environmental authorities have documented a greater risk of heart
attacks among people exposed to excessive noise, and they are finding new
evidence of noise's long-suspected ill effects on sleep and emotional
well-being.

Investigation of the lifestyles of German cardiac patients has shown about
a 25% greater chance of heart attacks among those whose work or home
environments were persistently exposed to noise above 65 decibels, says
Hartmut Ising, a researcher with the Federal Environmental Agency's Institute
for Water, Soil and Air Hygiene
http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/uba-info-e/e-fach5.htm who has pioneered
inquiries into the physiological effects of noise exposure.

"Before, experts throughout the world accepted that noise annoys people
and, if loud enough, can lead to deafness, but otherwise it has always been
thought to have no effect on the body," says Ising, who has long believed
otherwise.

An 11-year research project involving more than 1,000 heart patients found
that noise, especially when it disrupts sleep, produces stress hormones that
accelerate aging and heart disease, Ising says.

Yet further study into the heart risks is needed to convince industry and
urban planners that decisive action must be taken to reduce noise levels in
busy cities, says Ising, noting that medical studies for decades have focused
exclusively on hearing impairment.

Normal traffic generally produces noise of about 70 decibels, while heavy
traffic reaches levels of about 90 decibels. A chain saw's noise measures
about 105 decibels.

Scientists from all 15 European Union countries who are drafting a common
noise policy estimate that excessive racket costs governments as much as 2%
of gross domestic product in lowered productivity, increased accidents and
more-frequent illness.

"Governments could actually save money if they reduced noise in the most
affected areas, but we are a long way from getting politicians to understand
this," says Hugo Lyse Nielsen of the Danish Environment and Energy Ministry
http://www.mem.dk/ukindex.htm which is coordinating the EU noise policy
project.

Unlike water and air pollution, noise emissions dissipate quickly, and
their long-term influences on society are harder to track, Nielsen says.

Eighty million people, or about one in four EU residents, suffer noise
exposure that affects their job performance, he says, referring to the first
results of the working group's research into noise hazards.

Another 170 million Europeans live in borderline areas where traffic,
construction and aircraft noises only occasionally exceed the accepted
65-decibel "safe" limit.

Most of those areas are expected to get worse and to clearly break the
ceiling as travel and transport on the Continent continue to accelerate.

The EU project is in its infancy, since the bureaucrats from Brussels
launched the quest for harmony among their member states' regulations and
measurements of noise only two years ago.

"The biggest problems are, logically, in the biggest cities--London, Paris,
Rome, Berlin," says Nielsen, noting that no comparative noise index has been
established yet but that one of the EU working group's tasks will be to map
sources of noise and volumes.

Most city noise stems from automobile traffic, and Nielsen laments that car
use in most major European cities continues to climb despite campaigns to
encourage more reliance on mass transportation.

Islands of serenity exist in some urban centers, such as Copenhagen, where
50% of the work force walks or rides a bicycle to work and much of the rest
commutes by train or bus.

Although public tolerance of environmental disturbances is notoriously low
in Northern European countries, noise researchers are finding less
concern--and less willingness to fund improvements--in the EU's Mediterranean
member countries, which are more accustomed to clatter.

"In Italy, Greece and Spain, people have lived for a long time with higher
noise levels because of the number of motorcycles and air conditioners," says
Kyriakos Psychas <Kyriakos.psychas@eea.eu.int>, noise project manager at the
European Environment Agency http://www.eea.eu.int in Copenhagen. "Perhaps
because these are sources that are seen as improving the quality of life,
fewer people are bothered by them."

Getting people to comply with noise regulations under such circumstances is
difficult, Psychas says, unless other inducements are in play. In Athens, his
home city, he recalls, police managed to get compliance with motorcycle speed
limits only when stiff fines were imposed on violators.

Perception of noise also can be influenced by such factors as the
desirability of the activity generating it, researchers say. Denmark's
thousands of modern windmills emit a loud hum, but Danes tend not to complain
because they find it preferable to the quieter but unwelcome option of
nuclear power, Nielsen says.

Still, northern member states of the EU assign higher value to urban calm.
In Germany, laws governing the larger cities usually restrict hours when
apartment dwellers can run water or flush toilets and forbid the disposal of
glass, metal and other trash late at night or on Sundays.

Even smaller towns tend to have hours for the use of lawn mowers and other
noisy outdoor equipment.

In this most litigious of European countries, urbanites irritated by the
escalating noise of city life are increasingly resorting to lawsuits to vent
their frustration.

"The city shouldn't allow so much traffic onto such a narrow residential
street," insists Bernd Wolff, a 48-year-old engineer whose second-floor
apartment on Schildhorn Street in Berlin is passed every day by 60,000 cars
taking a shortcut between two major freeways. "I know city life is never
completely quiet, but this is ridiculous. And there's a very simple
solution--close the autobahn exit."

Wolff is one of dozens of Berliners who have filed suit against the city,
alleging dereliction of duty by urban planners. Like most other litigants, he
says he remains fairly healthy but worries about the long-term effects of
living with the constant rush of traffic noise above the 65-decibel level.

City authorities, however, contend that resolving one neighborhood's noise
problems would simply shunt those problems onto another locale.

"If you prohibit traffic from using Street A, it just moves on to Street B.
It doesn't disappear," says Karl-Heinz Winter, an advisor with the city's
Agency for Construction, Housing and Transport.

Winter and other government officials point out that much has been done to
tone down traffic noise.

German and EU regulations now limit not only exhaust but noise emissions
from new cars, trucks and aircraft, although no regulations have been imposed
on the predominantly state-owned railroads in the region.

A handful of inner-city neighborhoods and busy freeway interchanges that
abut residential areas are under "night-driving bans," which prohibit heavy
trucks between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Similarly, night-flight bans are in effect at two of Berlin's three
airports, Tegel and Tempelhof, says Werner Bochynek, a municipal official
charged with balancing environmental considerations with the need for landing
slots.

Berlin's plethora of construction projects promises to keep the volume on
high for the next five to 10 years, as the old cobblestone streets of the
eastern areas are upgraded and widened, and as buildings that were left to
deteriorate for four decades are renovated or replaced.

And those tracking the city's evolution from divided Cold War front line to
de facto capital of a united Europe see no relief ahead for the more
disturbing problems of road and air traffic noise.

"Very little of this is temporary," Michael Zschiesche, a lawyer with
Berlin's Independent Institute for Environmental Issues http://www.ufu.de ,
says of the rising noise levels since East Germany was absorbed into the West
with reunification in 1990.

"And reversing the course is going to be very difficult. Even if traffic
could be cut in half, noise would be reduced by only about 3 decibels. That's
nothing," he says.