Many people in industry and the Services, who have practical experience of noise, regard any
investigation of this question as a waste of time; they are not prepared even to admit the
possibility that noise affects people. On the other hand, those who dislike noise will sometimes
use most inadequate evidence to support their pleas for a quieter society. This is a pity, because
noise abatement really is a good cause, and it is likely to be discredited if it gets to be
associated with bad science. One allegation often made is that noise produces mental illness. A
recent article in a weekly newspaper, for instance, was headed with a striking illustration of a
lady in a state of considerable distress, with the caption 'She was yet another victim, reduced to
a screaming wreck '. On turning eagerly to the text, one learns that the lady was a typist who
found the sound of office typewriters worried her more and more until eventually she had to go into
a mental hospital. Now the snag in this sort of anecdote is of course that one cannot distinguish
cause and effect. Was the noise a cause of the illness, or were the complaints about noise merely a
symptom? Another patient might equally well complain that her neighbours were combining to slander
her and persecute her, and yet one might be cautious about believing this statement.
What is needed in the case of noise is a study of large numbers of people living under noisy
conditions, to discover whether they are mentally ill more often than other people are. Some time
ago the United States Navy, for instance, examined a very large number of men working on aircraft
carriers: the study was known as Project Anehin. It can be unpleasant to live even several miles
from an aerodrome; if you think what it must be like to share the deck of a ship with several
squadrons of jet aircraft, you will realize that a modern navy is a good place to study noise. But
neither psychiatric interviews nor objective tests were able to show any effects upon these
American sailors. This result merely confirms earlier American and British studies: if there is any
effect of noise upon mental health it must be so small that present methods of psychiatric
diagnosis cannot find it. That does not prove that it does not exist; but it does mean that noise
is less dangerous than, say, being brought up in an orphanage -- which really is a mental health
hazard.