Orinthia Schmidt

Stu­dent,

Hugh Wood­ing Law School

Nui­sance means any source of in­con­ve­nience or an­noy­ance.Noise nui­sance is the un­want­ed, dis­turb­ing or ex­ces­sive sound that caus­es harm to the dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ty or or­di­nary com­fort of hu­man or an­i­mal life.Un­der the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act Chap 35:05, no per­son shall make or cause to be emit­ted any noise greater in vol­ume or in­ten­si­ty than the "pre­scribed stan­dard" which means the max­i­mum per­mis­si­ble sound pres­sure lev­els.

What is the max­i­mum per­mis­si­ble sound lev­el?

Un­der the Act each zone has a dif­fer­ent pre­scribed stan­dard for noise which is al­lowed to be re­leased in­to the en­vi­ron­ment.In the In­dus­tri­al Ar­eas (Zone 1), the sound pres­sure lev­el must not ex­ceed a con­tin­u­ous sound pres­sure of 75 deci­bels or an in­stan­ta­neous (un­weight­ed peak) sound pres­sure of 130 deci­bels at any­time dur­ing the day or night.

In En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sen­si­tive Ar­eas (Zone 2), dur­ing the day time (8 am to 8 pm) the sound pres­sure lev­el should not ex­ceed three deci­bels above the back­ground lev­el, and the in­stan­ta­neous sound pres­sure lev­el should not ex­ceed 120 deci­bels. In the night (8 pm to 8 am) the con­tin­u­ous sound pres­sure lev­el should not ex­ceed three deci­bels above the back­ground lev­el, and the in­stan­ta­neous sound pres­sure should not ex­ceed 115 deci­bels.

Gen­er­al­ly, the con­tin­u­ous sound pres­sure lev­el in this area should not ex­ceed 60 deci­bels.In Gen­er­al Ar­eas (Zone 3), in the day (8 am to 8 pm) the con­tin­u­ous sound pres­sure lev­el should not ex­ceed five deci­bels above the back­ground lev­el, and the in­stan­ta­neous sound pres­sure should not ex­ceed 120 deci­bels.In the night (8 pm to 8 am) the con­tin­u­ous sound pres­sure should not ex­ceed 5 deci­bels above the back­ground lev­el, and the in­stan­ta­neous sound pres­sure lev­el should not ex­ceed 115 deci­bels.

Notwith­stand­ing the above, the con­tin­u­ous sound pres­sure lev­el should not ex­ceed 80 deci­bels dur­ing the day­time and 65 deci­bels dur­ing the night­time.How­ev­er, there are ex­cep­tions to these pre­scribed stan­dards set out in the Noise Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Rules.

How is the stan­dard mea­sured?

To de­ter­mine if some­one is ex­ceed­ing the stan­dard, mea­sure­ments must be tak­en us­ing sound lev­el me­ters to de­ter­mine the sound pres­sure lev­el (SPL). SPL is record­ed in deci­bels (dB) and one can then com­pare the read­ings with the stan­dards set in the Rules.These mea­sure­ments must be tak­en by trained per­son­nel at the bound­ary of the prop­er­ty where the sound is gen­er­at­ed or at the bound­ary of the prop­er­ty of a per­son im­pact­ed by the sound.

Ef­fects an­dal­ter­na­tives

Noise nui­sance can have se­ri­ous ef­fects on ba­bies, the el­der­ly, at risk pa­tients and pets.It can cause mi­graines, hear­ing loss, ir­ri­tabil­i­ty and sleep de­pri­va­tion.Ex­ces­sive noise is against the law and can amount to noise pol­lu­tion/nui­sance. How­ev­er, if any per­son or or­gan­i­sa­tion in­tends to con­duct or fa­cil­i­tate an event or ac­tiv­i­ty which would in­volve us­ing am­pli­fied sounds that may breach the pre­scribed noise stan­dards, an ap­pli­ca­tion should be made to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty for a noise "vari­a­tion".

The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is on the per­son af­fect­ed neg­a­tive­ly to con­tact the near­est po­lice sta­tion for re­lief from noise nui­sance.