Indoor Noise – the Next Mold?

Indoor Noise – the Next Mold?

I thought I would give you all a break from my analysis of movies from the 70’s and 80’s and introduce what may seem to be an unusual series of topics. I’m talking about workplace environmental stressors – or in plain English, stuff that annoys us while we’re inside. The first topic is indoor noise.

Usually we may focus on construction related noise or other occupational noise exposures. For the sake of our discussion, we’ll consider noise as sound that’s loud or unpleasant, and sound as, well, sound – something we can hear.

A while back Wynn mentioned to me that indoor noise and its affect on us could become a new indoor environmental quality phenomenon on the scale of mold. At the time, I was taken aback by that remark. But as I thought about it, it makes a lot of sense.

In case you didn’t know, back in my youth, I played in high school and college band. Those of you who know me won’t be surprised to learn I played the drums. I promise you that my parents, friends, and family many times considered my drumming as noise, while I was thinking how great I sounded!

So like a lot of other people, I really love music. So maybe that makes me a little bit more tuned into the sounds in my environment. And the noise. Especially indoor noise.

So when the sounds in my environment, like music, are pleasant or are something I like, I tend to feel more at ease. And sometimes when I work, I like to listen to music in the background, or maybe a sports talk show, or a baseball game over the Internet.

As a matter fact, I enjoy listening to soundtracks or what are known as area music loops from different places I like to visit. Disney World is a perfect example. Whether you’re at one of the resorts, one of the parks, or on one of the rides (and even standing in line!), there’s a good chance that there is a unique soundtrack playing in the background while you enjoy your vacation.

So it’s pretty reasonable then that when someone like me listens to the soundtrack from one of those places we visited, it takes us back to a good memory, so the sound helps provide a nice feeling. In this case, the sound is a good thing. And in my opinion, the Disney Imagineers are ingenious in their way of weaving all sorts of sensory experiences into our overall Disney experience. I’m not the only geek out there – scores of websites play Disney area music loops for people like me.

But what if we’re experiencing a sound or noise that’s not pleasant or is distracting? Over the last several days, there’s been a car alarm that goes off pretty regularly during the day all day at a nearby office. I don’t know about you, but that noise gets on my nerves pretty quickly, and if I were working in that office, I’d do something to make sure that noise stopped. As it was, it took considerable self control to keep from going over there and “deactivating” the alarm.

And maybe unpleasant or distracting noise is easily eliminated. What about a noise source that maybe is not as easy to reduce or eliminate?

On the one hand, it’s pretty easy to dismiss worker complaints that relate to office noise. But is that the best approach? For workers who are in an open office area with many other coworkers, use of noise canceling headphones may help, but what if it makes the problem worse if wearing headphones makes people feel claustrophobic? I’m not suggesting that we abandon open office areas, or that offices should be totally silent. After all, total silence may be more unnerving than a little bit of background noise. Merely telling everyone to keep the noise down (and tell the complaining workers to just deal with it) is probably not going to win you many friends or help make the complaints go away and return office harmony.

There are plenty of great articles on this exact phenomenon. And as we’ve seen changes in the way interior spaces, particularly offices, are designed and built, it’s not surprising then that the way we interact with each other has changed, and so indoor environmental factors have changed. Many office space is now open bullpen type offices, which from a construction and management perspective may be great, but if noise from coworkers and general office space noise act to distract or even annoy workers, stress levels, productivity, and in some cases, worker health can be affected. A headache is a headache, right?

Study data points out office workers may feel more stressed out, and even helpless! Study data also shows reduction in cognitive performance and morale. So at the very least, the bottom line is affected due to less work getting done, possibly lower quality of work, and increased absenteeism. That’ll get management’s attention.

It’s important to recognize that we may too quickly blame poor indoor air quality or other environmental factors when dealing with problems where one or more of the occupants are complaining about non-specific symptoms.

What about hotel or apartment noise? Like offices, hotels deal with noisy guests, housekeeping operations, and noise transmittal between guest rooms and corridors. And these issues many times occur late at night or early (too early!) in the morning. Apartments face many of the same challenges.

How will these phenomena affect design and construction? Or will they? I say yes, and as architects, engineers, contractors, and building owners/operators, we need to prepare to meet these challenges head on.

How do you approach these issues? I’d love to hear or read about your stories, and with your permission, share the best ones in a follow up blog post. I’m guessing it’’s hard to work when you’ve got both hands pressed over your ears.

Here are a couple of links to articles I thought were pretty interesting:

http://blogs.hbr.org/2010/11/noise-at-the-office-how-to-cop/

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/01/the-open-office-trap.html

Stay noisy, my friends.