Mrs. Minks lives at the crossroads of noise in the Rhein-Main region. Trains, cars, airplanes assault her ears minute by minute. She blames her migraines and sudden loss of hearing on the unrelenting din. Noise sickens: 60% of all Germans suffer impaired health from daily exposure to high levels of noise. Noise kills: the Federal Environmental Agency states that there are ten times as many deaths from traffic noise above 70 decibels than from air pollution. As if the daily exposure to noise is not enough, increasing numbers of young people are blasting themselves with music. Today, one out of four young people has already irreparably harmed their hearing by exposure in discos or with walkmen. We can only speculate about the psychic consequences. Does deafness lead to dulled, apathetic people? But demands to implement responsible noise reduction policies have fallen upon deaf ears. "Politicians usually live in quiet neighborhoods. They don’t know what noise terror is and so they don’t act,” says noise expert Hartmut Schon from Lower Saxony’s Environmental Ministry. Noise costs us about 12 million Euro every year, and it’s getting louder...
Press reviews:
Stuttgarter Zeitung:
With some clever ideas Sigrid Faltin and Peter Ohlendorf illustrate the noise level of our civilized industrial world in a truly awesome way.
Tagesspiegel Berlin:
This appealing documentary avoids cheap criticism of civilization and isn’t just a vent for sufferers’ complaints about too much noise either.
Mannheimer Morgen:
Well done!