Toronto Star - Life Section
Thursday April 24, 1997 Page C5
Shhhhh ... we want peace and quiet
Unnecessary noise is everywhere, from piped-in music in restaurants to leaf blowers. But a quiet revolution is brewing
By Bill Taylor
Toronto Star Staff Reporter
The sound system belts out, "You . . . doin' that thing you do," Eric Greenspoon peers at his noise meter and Annette Feige stirs her coffee and states what appears to be fairly obvious.
"I'm not a cranky old geezer at odds with the world! And yes, I'll sit in a place like this sometimes" - this being the Eaton Centre JJ Muggs restaurant - "with the music going and say, 'Hey, what is that song?'
"But I have my limits."
Feige, 31, realized she'd reached those limits the night she couldn't get to sleep because of the noisy party at the house next door. Except, when she went to ask her neighbor to lower the volume, she realized the party wasn't there at all... "it was 30 houses away! Thirty!
"No one else had complained. That was obvious because when I went and asked the guy to turn it down, he did right away. He had no idea he'd been blasting the whole street."
"It's that Canadian mentality," Greenspoon, 41, throws in. ``People don't complain."
"Yeah," Feige replies. "But what effect must it have been having on the people in those other 29 houses? Especially the ones closest."
She and Greenspoon are at the forefront of what they hope will turn into a quiet revolution across Canada. As leading lights in the Citizens Coalition Against Noise they'll be on the southwest corner of Yonge and Dundas Sts. next Wednesday - International Noise Awareness Day - handing out earplugs.
"And informational material," says Greenspoon. ``We want people to know what we're all about. We've already got Barbara Hall, the mayor, on side and a lot of other municipalities."
Proclamations of the day are being issued all over southern Ontario, from Aurora to Windsor. But the coalition isn't stopping there. It's hoping for a widespread minute of silence, too.
"At 2:15 p.m. on Wednesday, we're urging people to stop whatever they're doing and just . . . listen," says Greenspoon.
Coalition is hoping for a widespread minute of silence next Wednesday
A music teacher and guitarist - "unamplified!" - he's also a realist and doesn't expect the city to grind to a hushed halt for 60 seconds. Even out on the sidewalk, the noise of traffic is sometimes drowned by the music issuing from a store or café.
The tunes in JJ Muggs are registering about 70 decibels on the noise meter. "I don't so much mind their choice of songs," Greenspoon says, "but the volume could be lower. I cased out 10 or 15 restaurants today on Yonge and along Queen. This is typical."
"It's not dangerous, just annoying," Feige adds. "If you're trying to hold a conversation, you have to strain a bit."
Normal conversation, Greenspoon says, registers 58 to 60 decibels. The Ontario workplace standard, he says, is a maximum 90 decibels for eight hours. "It's higher, strangely, than the universal average, which is 85. That's about the level of a smoke detector going off. It's not just your hearing that's at risk, it's the stress it causes, particularly when you have no control over it and it's just rammed at you.
"Rock concerts? Easily 115 to 120 decibels. Easily. Extremely dangerous."
But it's the noise of daily life that most concerns the coalition. Noise that Greenspoon says is increasing steadily.
"You can hardly go into a store any more without music coming at you. You ask them and they say it attracts customers or that other stores do it so they have to."
There are few if any truly quiet urban places any more, it seems. Feige is a library worker, "and even they can be noisy, let me tell you!"
There's more traffic on the streets, more traffic in the air, more gas-powered lawn mowers in the suburbs.
"And leaf-blowers," Greenspoon says. "Now there's a frivolous commodity! The technology is there to quieten a lot of these things but there's not the will."
"It all adds up. Young people are growing up knowing no different. They're damaging their hearing and becoming stressed out whether they're aware of it or not."
A quick, informal poll of workers and customers in Eaton Centre stores and restaurants results in a lot of raised eyebrows that the question is even being asked.
"I never even notice it," says an assistant in a women's fashion store. "Except when a song comes on that I really like. Or hate. Complaints? No one's ever complained to me. Most people like it, I think."
"And in a coffee shop a customer shrugs. "I don't mind it," he says. "If it was quiet in here, I'd probably wonder why."
It's not just Jane and Joe Average who are hard to convince. Greenspoon and Feige say it's difficult to convince many environmental groups that noise pollution is as important as air or water pollution.
"Not only do they not deal with the issue, but they sometimes contribute to the problem," Feige says. "The annual Earth Day events, for instance. They have huge loudspeakers blasting away. That's a real irony.
"Still, we're slowly getting through to people. We get a lot of E-mails, a lot of phone calls. We have several hundred supporters and members."
In an ideal world, she says, people would have control over what they listen to. "Let's face it," she grins. "Even nature sounds can get very annoying. Say, if you're trying to sleep and there's a bird chirping."
Greenspoon spreads out some cards on the table. "Your music bothers me!" says one, and on the back: "I don't like music forced upon me. Would you please turn it off?" Another is stronger: "Your loud music drove me out!"
JJ Muggs doesn't receive either card. But as Greenspoon and Feige get up to go, they are not tempted to leave a third one, less often handed out: "Thank you for your quiet environment."