The effects of noise on man

Of all the stresses to which man is exposed in his daily environment, noise is undoubtedly the most present, the most widespread and the most insidious. Suspected for several decades of being responsible for various physiological and physical disorders, noise has been the subject of numerous approaches and research aimed at understanding its modes of action and mechanisms. Despite this work, noise remains one of the most poorly understood nuisances, both in terms of its effects on the individual and its economic and social repercussions.

This lack of knowledge is based first and foremost on the difficulty of measuring the actual short-, medium- or long-term –– consequences of noise aggression on organisms that are likely to adapt and thus mask all or part of these effects. It is reinforced by the fact that noise has a large number of subjective components, and as such can be perceived in very different ways from one individual to another, with varying reactions giving rise to interpretations that are all too often contradictory or ambiguous.