By TINA FAWOLE

You have a child whom you often have to shout an instruction on, or have to repeat yourself time and time again for him or her to hear you well. Sometimes when you talk to the child, he or she puts up a somewhat nonchalant attitude to you or whatever you might be saying. The child is generally known and describe as suffering from what in Yoruba language is called agboya. It becomes habitual, or better still, attitudinal.
Most parents resort – wrongly, though – to corporal punishment as a way of solving this problem. But two wrongs have never been known to make a right. This problem is right here with us, especially in the urban centres. It is partial deafness, caused by hearing loss. Most of us, in reality, are partially deaf. And the major cause is noise pollution, an evil which causes many health and social problems. Noise pollution is an unwanted, disturbing sound that causes a nuisance in the eye - or ear – of the beholder.
Operators of commercial grinding machines, music shops, hawkers who use megaphones, noisy vehicles, motorcycles, barking dogs, overly loud music from within the home an noisy aircraft, among others, are harbingers of noise pollution. Then the location of worship centres which use noisy public address system in residential neighbourhoods, especially at odd hours of the day or night, has compounded the problem.
Sustained noise over a period of time can also engender deafness in the form of gradual losses in hearing. This is the most common loss among the young ones who enjoy listening to music from the Walkman-type radios, CD players, as well as MP3s. The problem may not have been noticed here, but in those countries where those products come from, it is already an issue, even if the manufacturers are still putting up an argument that it is not their products but wrong use that causes hearing loss.
How does noise-induced hearing loss occur?
Loud noise assaults he delicate hair cells of the inner ear. Noise-induced hearing loss typically occurs gradually and without pain. After exposure to loud noise, a person may experience ringing in the ears or difficulty in hearing. This is called a “temporary threshold shift.” After a few hours (or in some cases, a few days), this temporary shift in hearing can become permanent. Once permanent hearing has occurred, it is not possible to restore hearing.
And this is where the danger is: noise-induced hearing loss is permanent. One is not saying here, however, that hearing loss is the only effect of noise pollution. Annoyance and aggression, (quick temper), hypertension, high stress levels, sleep disturbances and other harmful effects such as forgetfulness, severe depression and, at times, panic attacks are all traceable to noise pollution.
As the nation spends a huge portion of its health budget yearly fighting these health problems, it amounts to sparing cause and fighting effect. It means what we are doing is curing without paying attention to prevention. Yet prevention, they say, is better than cure.
We need to wake up to the realities of modern nationhood. There is an urgent need to realize that noise is as potent as other forms of environmental pollution, be they air, water or physical pollution. Time has come for the government, through the Ministry of Environment at the state and federal levels, to start addressing the issue of unwanted noise. The Ministry of Urban Planning must be part of it because a lot of noise emanates from urban planlessness in the sense of allowing unregulated citing of worship centres in purely residential neighbourhoods.

Mrs. Fawole is the Programme Director/CEO of No Noise!, a non-governmental advocacy group which campaigns against noise pollution.