Noise pollution is one of the major serious health hazards, causing annoyance, irritation, tension, headache and even lead to accidents at work places. Besides, it causes hearing loss, slow deep breathing and many more health harms.
The citizens in twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad are of the view that there should be complete ban on using pressure horns in municipal areas, besides use of loud speakers and electronic entertainment devices must be checked.
There must be some criteria and standard to check noise pollution, particularly caused by different sorts of vehicles, they opined.
They also demanded for imposition of penalty upon the industrialists failing to observe noise limits.
Hassan Mehmood, a shopkeeper at Raja Bazaar said that Auto-rickshaws were the main source of noise pollution in the area, adding that non-implementation of regulatory laws has also become another reason of high-level traffic noise in Rawalpindi.
"Poor models of vehicles, use of defective silencers and installation of industrial units in residential areas have led to increasing noise pollution in the city," a shopkeeper remarked.
The main industrial plants in the area are lathe machines which create excessive noise in the residential areas besides the generators and compressors do aggravate the situation, he added. A medical expert, Dr Iqbal Sikandar said that the noise frequency while talking at a normal level is 30 to 60 decimal which increases up to 60 to 90 decimal when one shouts. He said that 85 decimal are the limit for human ears and more than this would harm the eardrum.
Police sources said that unlike Islamabad, the roads of Rawalpindi are very congested and have already been encroached by vendors, cart pushers and hawkers that always create traffic problems and thereby the noise pollution due to using of horns in such situations.
Islamabad Capital Territory police sources said that 1500 vehicles having pressure horns were fined during last 45 days whereas from June 2007 to till date, 5000 vehicles have been imposed penalties besides confiscation of pressure horns.