What do Red Star Marketing, Wenfu Enterprises, Gud Motor Trading, Choice Suzuki, and Mart 1 have in common? They all have loud speakers on the sidewalk by their store entrances, and blare loud music to the street.
Other commercial establishments attach loudspeakers on their outside walls, and many eateries turn up their levels of music (mostly thumping sound today identified as “music”) so that it becomes part of the general street cacophony.
Add to that what seems to be a growing trend of loud music emanating from cruising or parked vehicles.
If we were describing the layers of fragrance notes of a perfume, of course, the basic note would be the roaring and sputtering of the thousands of motorized tricycles and motorcycles on the City’s streets.
I didn’t know until recently that when a new motorcycle is purchased, it comes with a standard factory muffler that has a silencer. However, I was told by the salesman of one of the larger motorcycle stores that most buyers then opt to replace this muffler with “modified parts” at a cost of between P1000 and P2000.
This particular store had three models — loud sputtering, roaring, and explosive bursts — I wonder what testosterone level responds to which.
By the way, the dozen or so motorcycle dealers in town each target a monthly sales quota of 50 units, on the average. If they were to meet their targets, there would be 600 new motorcycles each month added to the already thousands plying the streets and roads. Think of Dumaguete City’s sound environment of the future.
According to European standards, for general purposes, an acceptable decibel level during the day should be 65db and 55 db at night.
In residential areas, day levels should not exceed 50 db, with 40 db as a limit for night time.
When the Silliman University Physics Department took noise measurements some years back, the day time level in Perdices St. ranged between 76 db to 86 db, therefore, far exceeding the European/German standard.
Does this matter? Yes, if the World Health Organization and other international entities concerned with public health and well-being are to be believed.
A growing body of research links noise to cardiovascular and blood pressure concerns, to gastrointestinal changes, to mental stress and anxiety, to adverse social behavior like aggressiveness, and also to performance reduction.
Research particularly points to the ill effects of intermittent, intrusive loud noise — think of the local custom of incredibly loud public discos that invade residences at night for miles around.
Why shouldn’t the sound be at volumes sufficient for the actual dance areas?
The current official tolerance of noise shows an utter disregard for people’s well-being, people’s right to peace and quiet, and people’s health.
Of what use then are articles in the Civil Code or in the City’s Environment Code?
As always, what we have here is an issue of governance. What is the City going to do about a bad situation that will only get worse?