Hyderabad: Hyderabad is the third noisiest metro in India after Mumbai and Lucknow as per a report by the Central Pollution Control Board. The CPCB gathered data from 35 noise monitoring systems installed by it in nine metro cities for the period 2011-14.
The findings were published in its report, Status of ambient noise levels in India.
As analysed by the CPCB, in the four years, Hyderabad had the third highest cases of noise levels going beyond the prescribed standards at its noise monitoring systems. During the same period Bengaluru and Kolkata had the least number of violations.
The noise monitoring systems in Hyderabad are at two commercial zones of Abids and Punjagutta, the Jeedimetla industrial zone, the silence zone at the zoo and the Jubilee Hills residential zone. The noise at Abids, Punjagutta and the zoo reached industrial levels. At all these places, the noise levels exceeded the prescribed limits of the CPCB in every reading.
This is the fallout of government departments like the Pollution Control Board, traffic police and transport, not acting to curb noise pollution in the city.
An example of effectively controlling noise pollution was recently reported from Bodh Gaya in Bihar where government departments such as the Pollution Control Board, traffic police and transport departments came together to curb noise pollution — resulting in a drastic drop of nearly 50 per cent.
While the Telangana State Pollution Control Board officials say that controlling noise pollution is not in their hands — as it is mainly due to honking by motorists — and that the responsibility falls on the traffic police, a senior traffic police official said the first step is to identify high noise pollution zones. But no such detailed report has been submitted by the TSPCB to them.
The traffic official said, “Controlling noise pollution is indeed in our agenda and we are trying to find ways of how, apart from educating people, we can enforce punishments using technology.”
Dr C. Shekhar Singh, a consultant ENT surgeon at Karkhana said, “While noise pollution can have immediate health effects such as anxiety and psychological disturbance, in the long-term, prolonged exposure to loud noise can even impair hearing or cause tinnitus, which needs immediate medical help as it causes a constant humming sound in the ears — which is especially irritating when one is trying to sleep. Simple measures like using ear plugs is enough and those who get exposed to noise regularly should get a pure tone audiometry test done.”
