Municipal government of Shanghai investigates effect of noise pollution

The municipal government of Shanghai has initiated plans to investigate the effect of noise pollution on the general public, Asia One has reported.

Shanghai has long been victim to excessive noise levels emanating from streets and houses for some time now, and after years of being barraged with complaints from residents the local authorities have implemented plans to curb noise levels. Shanghai's local environmental protection departments receive an average of 100,000 complaints about noise pollution every year, accounting for roughly 48 per cent of all environmental pollution complaints.

In July the city authorities held a legislative hearing to draft regulations to control public noise. From this meeting, it emerged that the authorities would take a three-tiered approach to resolving the issues.

The first is examining whether to ban or control the use of portable loudspeakers in parks, squares and residential streets for physical exercise.
They will then decide whether to cap the refurbishment of residential buildings to specified hours, and finally, judge whether to limit the use of loudspeakers at schools.

However, it is still unclear how the regulations will take shape in practice. Cai Jie, who represented the Zhabei district bureau of the aforementioned administration at the hearing, said that authorities have limited powers at the moment to quell this growing concern.

He suggested that "a noise inspection or patrol system can be established in areas that receive the highest number of complaints about noise pollution and the statistics could be made public every day. Meanwhile, the environmental protection departments should work closely with the police to set up a strict registration system to strictly observe promotional events or sports that may produce a large amount of noise pollution."

According to Shi Jing of China Daily, social life noise (general street noise) is the biggest concern in the city, and accounts for around half of the complaints. This will be something the city government will be looking to target first.

Posted by Claire Manning