Today is World Hearing Day 2022, and this is the World Health Organisation’s theme this year. It “will focus on the importance and means of hearing loss prevention through safe listening.”Globally, one in four or 2.5 billion people will lose hearing by 2050 according to the first-ever WHO Report on World Hearing Heath launched on World Hearing Day in 2021. Of these 2.5 billion, the highest numbers of hearing disabled people are in India and its surrounding countries.Central Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, himself an ENT surgeon addressed the 2021 WHO launch event virtually. He said that India is committed to put in place preventive strategies to limit “impending mountain of hearing loss” and had launched a national program for prevention and control of deafness as far back as 2006.Noise pollution affects health of humans and animals, alters natural patterns and rhythms of life. Noise pollution has been a chronic hazard for decades in Mumbai, one of the noisiest cities in the world.The link between pollution and health was especially highlighted by Covid-19, a zoonotic pandemic, which dominated since 2020 and 2021, Covid-19 is not the only environment-driven health crisis we suffer.Dr Harsh Vardhan stressed that leisure and work-related noise and excessive residential noise are risk factors to hearing loss. Listen With Care is an important message, though it is not always possible for Mumbaikars to regulate their own listening. Mumbai is a city under constant construction and noise from construction is continuous and inescapable.In 2016, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation amended their Rules for construction timings to allow construction by 4 hours more than previously. In the early morning and late night, construction activities private building and public infrastructure continues without mitigation measures like noise barriers or sound mufflers. Many of these sites are placed immediately beside schools and hospitals.On World Hearing Day 2022, citizens’ complaints against noise from construction fall on deaf ears of the authorities. In Mumbai, listening with care has been taken out of our hands, and Mumbaikars suffer the inescapable and hazardous outcomes of avoidable noise pollution, whether they like it or not.
