![]() ![]() Now imagine sleeping in a room for 8-10 hours daily which has both a ceiling fan and an air conditioner (60-70dB sound level) running at the same time. In many parts of India, people use a ceiling fan alongside an air conditioner. As you may see in the Fig 1.1, ceiling fans on an average generate between 60dB to 70dB of loudness which has been suggested as good enough noise by many studies. While ‘noise pollution’ from a ceiling fan does not bring to mind the thought of life-threatening diseases, but it does interfere with our body’s rhythm and affect our overall health and well-being. While the tick-tick noise or the grumbling noise of the motor is contributed by mechanical defects and can be rectified, there has not been much of work done to reduce the air cutting sound of a fan which we feel is a “performance driven sound”. Other factors that contribute to the fan noise including the size and quality of motor, design of blades, mounting hardware and the body material. The main reason of fan noise is in fact the sound of air cutting which is produced when blades of a fan cut the air to create turbulence causing air to be pushed. Doesn’t the air cutting noise of our fan bother us while talking on our phones? Doesn’t the fan noise disturb our TV watching experience? The answer is “It does” but we tend to ignore it. It won’t be an understatement to say that fan noise has become a part of our lifestyle and we have reluctantly accepted this problem. Putting this in other words, we are exposed to the fan noise for long hours in our day-to-day lives. India being a big tropical country, ceiling fans are a common household sighting and they run for 8-10 hours during the summer season and in fact up to 10 months in a year. To paint a better picture, let’s first have a look at loudness (decibel levels) of common sounds. However, one should not ignore the common sounds we are exposed to inside our homes which are caused by the routine use of home appliances such as TV, vacuum cleaner and ceiling fans among others. The most common causes of noise pollution are transportation systems, industrial equipment etc. ![]() Some of the widely known health effects of noise pollution include headaches, stress, sleeping disorders and hypertension. While these sounds have become a part of our life and hardly bother us much, it is important to understand that regular exposure to higher sound levels can lead to serious health consequences. We live in an environment where we are exposed to different types of sounds on a daily basis. ![]()
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