Centre sets up chain of microphones to monitor city noise

Ten years after it first set the limits for noise pollution, the government on Wednesday moved to enforce them. As part of an ambitious program to control the noise levels in the top 25 cities of the country, the ministry of environment & forests (MoEF) has set up five digital microphones in each of the four metros as well as Lucknow, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The microphones, that had been placed at spots like hospital zones, traffic junctions etc, will continuously record the noise level and send it every few minutes to a ‘master’ computer placed at the offices of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Delhi.

The scheme, delayed by a decade and implemented due to the intervention of current environment minister Jairam Ramesh, will extend to all 25 cities by end of 2012.

The data so collected will be available for public consumption on the website of the “National Ambient Noise Monitoring Network,” but Jairam Ramesh was quick to point out that the idea is not just to produce “nice charts and power point presentations.”

“State pollution control boards will have to take action on the data,” Ramesh said, adding that the ministry will keep a close watch.

Awareness of noise pollution and its side effects are at the levels that it used to be for air pollution in the 80s, says Anuradha Shukla, head of transport planning and environment at the Central Road Research Institute, New Delhi -- the premium transportation research agency of India.

Shukla, whose team conducted studies on the impact of vehicular noise levels on human health in the 90s points out that high noise levels are affecting the health of people in ways they don’t realise.

“It increases blood pressure, affects the heart and causes psychosomatic and physical disturbances and diseases,” she points out.

Jairam Ramesh too quoted a study which found that noise levels at busy Delhi traffic intersection remained consistently at 75-80 decibels, even during the night. Sustained exposure to noise of 90 decibels or higher can cause deafness.