Efforts to counter noise pollution suffer from subjectivity problems and have not attracted the same level of public support as efforts to counter PM2.5.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/03/15
By: Jennifer Hsieh

In the past couple of years, PM2.5, or atmospheric particulate matter, has become a

Credit: REUTERS/Bobby Yip

popular buzzword for environmental activism in Taiwan. This was illustrated in Prof. Ming-sho Ho’s earlier contribution to Taiwan Insight, which includes an infographic that shows how Google searches for PM2.5 dramatically sky-rocketed after the 2015 release of a Chinese documentary “Under the Dome” on air pollution. Drawing upon the concept of social construction, Ho explains how the act of defining a problem produces the conditions and criteria through which an object becomes recognized as a problem in the first place.

A similar analysis can be made about noise pollution in Taiwan. Over the past 10 years, noise has consistently been ranked as the number one environmental complaint, reaching record numbers each year – that is until 2015 when complaints about unusual smells in the air began to surpass noise. And just as Ho points out that air pollution became a concern even after a steady decline in the Pollution Standards Index, the number of noise complaints started to grow in 2001 while the rate of decibel measurements found to be in violation of noise standards decreased, nearing zero percent.    [FULL  STORY]