Mumbai, Lucknow, Hyderabad noisiest

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 levels here exceeded the prescribed limits.

The irony is that the worst among these five locations are the commercial areas of Abids and Punjagutta, which reach industrial standards, along with the “silence zone” of Hyderabad zoo. At all these places the noise levels exceeded the prescribed limits by CPCB in every reading.

An enthusiastic and concerted initiative to control noise pollution is lacking in Hyderabad by government departments like the Pollution Control Board, Traffic Police and Transport, along with NGOs. An example of it was recently reported from Bodh Gaya in Bihar where the departments came together to curb noise pollution resulting by nearly 50 per cent.

While Telangana State Pollution Control Board officials say that controlling noise pollution is not in their hands as it is mainly due to honking and the responsibility falls on the traffic police, a senior traffic police official said that the first step is to identify high noise pollution zones but no such report has been submitted by the TSPCB to them.

The traffic official said, “Controlling noise pollution is 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, consultant ENT surgeon at Karkhana said, “While noise pollution can have immediate health effects like anxiety and psychological disturbance, in the long term prolonged exposure to noise can even impair hearing or cause tinnitus, which needs medical help as it causes humming sound in ear, 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.”