Hacker News Reader

Comment by cowmoo728 | Hacker News Reader

There's a growing body of evidence to suggest that persistent noise pollution leads to cardiovascular disease. One example:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-021-00532-5

View on HN

This makes wonder. I recently moved to the middle of a loud city, so I bought a pair or bose sleepbuds that drown everything out by playing background noise while I sleep - the sound of waves, actually. Is this low-level sound any less of a stressor than traffic, though? It's constant and calming so I fall asleep. But maybe it's not good for me, and leads to lower quality sleep anyway.

Can it be timed to cut off the sound after some pre-set time has passed?

It can, and it's a good point. But I get up at 7:30, and the hour before that can be noisy. Really, in a city, the last tranche of people go to bed at 2am, the first tranche rises at 6am. That's only four hours of quiet unfortunately, and even that can be interrupted.

In the future I will prioritise quiet when picking somewhere to live. I'm just a light sleeper and it kind of sucks. In evolutionary terms, it's heavily maladapted to city life.

I totally overlooked how busy one 'quiet' road is because I viewed my current house on a Sunday. Big disappointment, nice garden but effectively it is unusable. Much good luck on your quest for quiet! I really sympathize.

I’d highly suggest trying earplugs if you haven’t. The ones I use reduce sound by 33dB which is quite considerable.

They aren’t strong enough to block out my neighbor having a loud party, but it can block out pretty much everything else. It’s hard to sleep without them anymore.

I used to wear earplugs, but I find that the bose sleepbuds are more effective at blocking out sound. The problem I found was that earplugs let in deep, bass sounds - like the thud of the floorboards in the flat above me as my neighbour jumps up from bed in the depth of the night. Apparently because low frequency sounds travel well through bone, reaching your inner ear sideways. See here:

https://earplugstore.typepad.com/got_ears_get_informed/2020/...

Which earplugs do you use though?

Yeah you’re spot on about it not blocking the low bass frequencies. Maybe I need to get a pair of sleep buds for when my neighbor is having a party.

But I use Mack’s foam earplugs every night and they have been great for all non-party related noise.

Living it, I am not at all surprised. It has grossly elevated my baseline feeling of stress.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com