American Scientist

CLAMOR: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back. Chris Berdik. 272 pp. W. W. Norton & Co., 2025. $29.99.

In our everyday lives, noise is so widespread that we often ignore it—much to our detriment, as science journalist Chris Berdik writes in his newest book, Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back. Berdik describes noise as one of the most ubiquitous pollutants in our daily experience, showing few signs of abating. Noise affects what we can hear, how we feel, our health, our ability to learn, and even our longevity.

Berdik suggests that our current approach to noise—the typical focus on decibels and how loud something is—not only minimizes the full impact of noise on humans and on nature, but also brushes aside decades of work toward a more comfortable environment. He interviews designers, musicians, and scientists to better understand our various soundscapes, with the hope of creating more peaceful environments.

The book is split into two parts. Part one covers what and how we hear and how we respond, as well as the effects of noise on nature and the environment. A primary theme is that the true concern is less about the number of decibels and more about the quality and duration of sound, for both humans and animals. He writes, “As with underwater environments, the most harmful sounds in terrestrial ecosystems are not necessarily the loudest but rather the most persistent.”

Part two explores how to transform the soundscapes in our learning, work, and recreational spaces. This aim necessitates a new understanding of sound: Although a quiet environment can be a goal, noise can also be transformed into something pleasant. Many sounds are design choices, such as sounds from electronic devices, and can be changed. Berdik writes about efforts that have been underway in research, architectural design, product development, and urban planning toward more comfortable acoustic environments.

A common problem is that we tend to try to fix problematic noise, rather than anticipating and addressing sound in our designs of buildings, cities, and products. With some special exceptions such as concert halls, designers typically merely try to satisfy regulations rather than offer an acoustically satisfying environment.

Berdik writes about the concept of “soundscape,” a term that is often applied to environmental noise. A major principle when it comes to soundscapes is that there aren’t any bad sounds, but there can be wrong sounds at the wrong times. For instance, urban noise has been a problem for millennia: Nighttime chariot driving was prohibited in ancient Rome to protect citizens’ sleep. These days, almost conversely, electric vehicles have become so quiet, especially at slow speeds, that some sounds must be added so that pedestrians can hear them as they approach. The challenge is designing vehicle sounds that properly alert pedestrians without inordinately contributing to a noisy environment.

But noise is not always bad; in some cases, the right noise can actually be desirable. For example, studies in the 1950s and 1960s showed that the biggest complaints in offices and workplaces were less about the levels of ambient sound and more about the lack of privacy, both from being overheard and from being distracted by others. One result was the almost-heretical concept of masking systems, which use small loudspeakers to slightly increase the background sound level as if an office building’s HVAC were running a little more vigorously. Masking, often incorrectly called “white noise,” is now ubiquitous and has become big business because these systems can be very beneficial. However, they must be properly adjusted so that they are effective, without becoming an additional annoyance.

Humans aren’t the only ones affected by noise: Animals of all types are also dealing with increased noise from the modern world, making it harder to communicate and avoid danger.

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Humans aren’t the only ones affected by noise. Animals of all types are also dealing with increased noise from the modern world, making it harder to communicate and avoid danger. Perhaps the biggest measurable impacts are on underwater creatures. Aquatic animals perceive and use sound for a wide range of behaviors, including attracting mates, finding food, and avoiding predators. Underwater loudness can interfere with all of these things, but that’s not the only danger to some of these animals. Intense underwater sound can actually cause temporary hearing loss for many kinds of marine animals, and although auditory sensory cells can regenerate in some fish, amphibians, and birds, the same cannot be said for whales and dolphins, or for humans.

Changes to propulsion systems, combined with streamlined hulls and drag-reducing coatings on ships, can help quiet ship noise, but these changes come at a high financial cost—one at which many companies balk. But the noise pollution issue needs to be addressed industry-wide, not just by one or two companies, to truly make a difference. Berdik also reminds the reader that the issue does not have a one-size-fits-all solution: “A more tailored and adaptable approach to reducing underwater noise would focus on protecting the soundscapes of critical areas such as coral reefs, spawning grounds, and migration corridors, and that degree of specificity will require a lot more long-term listening.”

Berdik covers a lot of environments and soundscapes and puts forth many ideas in Clamor, sometimes to the detriment of a more in-depth examination of problems and their solutions. One could easily write a book solely on the effects of noise pollution on the physical health of humans, for example, or on the effects of noise on children in the classroom. Answers are few and far between, but maybe that’s not the real goal of this book. Perhaps, as Berdik writes, the goal is simply about “expanding our ambitions for sound.” In other words, looking at our subjective “definitions” of things like sound, noise, and music. For example: sound happens when you mow your lawn; noise happens when your neighbors mow their lawns; and music happens when your neighbors mow your lawn.

Noise can be quite subjective and any attempt to organize, quantify, and deal with noise is, by necessity, complicated and multifaceted. Clamor is an accessible introduction to the topic of noise and noise pollution, as well as a primer on how to see noise in a different way so that we can begin to change our soundscapes accordingly.