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Pathway from problem to solution:

This isn't just an annoyance claim

As a professional working in the field of acoustics, you know that noise is not just an annoyance but also has health effects. These effects are well established, with forty-plus years of research to confirm them: noise activates a stress response, with downstream associations to cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease, psychiatric disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, sleep disruption, and impairments in cognition and children’s learning. While most of the evidence on health effects comes from research on transportation and occupational noise, these sources can also produce low-frequency, tonal sound that may be continuous or intermittent. Noise, whether from an idling train, a ventilation system, or a loud concert, affects the ears and body through a common physiologic pathway, the body’s stress response, culminating in harms to physical and mental health. The science combined with the lived experience of residents from impacted communities – in the US and around the world – serves to validate the harms from data center noise.

Houses and front lawns along a residential street
Illustrative photo: Zac Gudakov / Unsplash

Health effects of data center noise

For a fuller discussion of the health effects of noise, with citations, see our page entitled Health Effects of Data Center Noise.

The next page deals with how the noise from data centers may be best measured and documented.

How data centers increase stress

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