Who would have thought noise could kill?

“Nakakabingi!” Juliet had complained in equal loudness about the silence on New Year’s Day. Wet large flakes, which fell on New Year’s Eve, had dampened her spirits, or I bet like most Filipinos, especially new arrivals, used to an explosive Bagong Taon. We had huddled under a virgin-white mantle from evening to night, nibbling on leftover food from Christmas, made listless by the quiet—like being submerged underwater—as Juliet vividly described. 

Not of the New Year though, but that sound reminded me of Arlene. She had nudged me off my noonday stupor at an informal seniors philosopher’s group sometime ago at Marpole Place, crying out, “Ahhh…did you hear the racket in the sky, this morning? It felt so close, I was afraid the jet would land straight on my bed, shattering my ears and burning me down.”

Marpole, where we live, and where she had grown up, sprawls right under the path of Boeing jets taking off and landing at YVR International Airport, a viewing distance west of us. Increased Air Canada flights and more berths for other international airlines, indeed, have raised noise levels these past few years.

While within city limits, Marpole lies on the extreme south end, where downtown hugs the mountains and the North Shore on the opposite side. Settled winds ribbon its grid streets of manicured front lawns, as well as long lines of aged oaks and chestnut trees, and in the spring, winter-gnarled cherry trees that burst into blossom canopies.

Hardly anyone loiters, though from early to late summer evenings, I meet couples strolling up and down grass-trimmed sidewalks, their whispers, accented by cawing crows, crying seagulls, or the call of mourning doves. Coming close to and passing by the school grounds on 68th Street, opened as a park in the summer, only then would squeals of children that seem to somersault in the air drown me. No noise really shatters the neighborhood until an ambulance screams its way to rescue someone or cops carry out a bust and planes take off or land.

Yet, when Gudrun Langolf, then chair of Marpole Oakridge Area Council Society’s, passed around a petition demanding YVR to lessen noise level by any means, I signed half-heartedly. I lived in Manila, where noise seems as natural as breathing, haven’t I? But, indeed, I should have been concerned; I could be turning deaf.

Or should I? I can still hear the rustle of taffeta that hugs the legs, ranging from zero or total silence—the kind we often experience on mountain tops as a ringing in our ears, “nakabinging tahimik,” and yes, during a snowfall—to 30 decibels of the softest whisper. And in normal conversations, already up 60 decibels, I hardly strain to catch a word. I should be affected when spirited exchanges raise decibel levels 10 times, according to the Noise-induced Hearing Loss website, or worse in bars and discos, where all sounds blare but then, I’d leap out of there as if ejected.

A door alarm or shout amid a din, especially in enclosures, does seem to shatter my ears though, the decibel already up by another 10 decibels translated higher into millions through an exquisite process, in which the pinna, our visible ear, catches sound that travels through tiny canals with esoteric sounding parts as waves in an inner furry tunnel of nerves to the brain. Learning in the site, too, that an ambulance siren at 120 decibels booms in trillions in the ear, I began to understand Arlene’s distraught state.

Her wailing, however, didn’t end with the airport’s earsplitting sounds; as well, even if only muffled, the thump of an adjacent neighbor’s teenage son playing his drum until the wee hours, and an insomniac just above her bedroom, scuttling around, hammering whatever on the floor, has turned her into a nightly criminal with thoughts of choking both.

Apparently because of its invisibility, it often baffles us to hear of illnesses like psychological imbalance, heart disease and even death as caused by sustained exposure to extreme loudness. Who hasn’t experienced temporary deafness during take off and landing on a flight? Or heard of a homecoming seaman who worked in the engine room turned totally deaf. I knew of an uncle-in-law, who, just out of the ICU and recovering in a regular ward, had died from the sound of a fire alarm due to a freak fire at Manila Doctor’s Hospital.

Constant review of anti-noise pollution laws— some going back to the 1930s like in Vancouver—has yielded a list of such unimagined culprits such as fitness classes, idling vehicles, buskers and street musicians, and yes, school yards, with ancillary information on what office or agency at City Hall to call if feeling endangered. Warnings about the dangers of “injected loud music” with iPhones and Androids though have seemingly fallen on deaf ears, pun intended.

When I told Arlene about these, she had raised her brows, “who would have thought we’ve come to this?” I nodded, silent about the multitude to which Juliet and I once belonged, gleeful amid ear-shattering “paputok” on New Year’s Eve.