Noise and Health
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The attitude towards the noise source.
Does a listener accept the noise source as
unavoidable and reasonable?
Anxiety about the noise.
A listener may associate the noise source with danger. A
nightly scratching noise at the window may be hardly noticeable for some people,
but may be severely annoying to others who perceive it to be an attempted burglary.
Social acceptance.
Every community develops certain socially acceptable behaviours
that may not have a foundation in formal government regulations.
Time of the day or week.
The same noise source with the same sound level may be tolerated
during the day, but not at night.
The value of the activity producing the noise.
Noise produced by perceived necessary
and important activities, such as the whining of police car or emergency vehicle
sirens, are very likely considered to be less annoying than noise consider to be
of no useful purposes.
Personal character and attributes.
An ill-
Location
People expect different noises in different locations. A particular noise
source may be annoying in a residential area but may be tolerated in an industrial
area.
A tiny group of structures in our brain, the limbic system, controls our emotion and behaviour. No matter how rational a person thinks her or she is, the limbic system occasionally overwhelms all rational thinking. There is nothing wrong with it, of course, because there would be no love and passion in the world, and the human race would long have died out. Unfortunately, the limbic system is also responsible for negative thinking and irrational behaviour.
Annoying noise is very subjective and mostly driven by emotional factors. Knowledge of these factors is important when evaluating a noise source for its annoyance potential.