Influence of reduced noise levels on human health during quarantine lockdown

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is one of the greatest challenges humanity must overcome and a defining global health crisis of our time. With the initial outbreak in December 2019, the acute respiratory disease has had an exponential rate of infection and a staggering death toll. There is experimental evidence suggesting an interaction between environment and virus mechanism using the aggregation-disaggregation process. As a result of this, risks factors for humans being infected increases. For example, in the current scenario, the COVID 19 virus and air pollutants both result in acute respiratory infection among humans. Hence, it becomes impendent to understand the interactional patterns of relationship between the environment and human beings. With the advent of urbanization and technological advancement, there has been a high amount of depletion rate of the environment in terms of pollution, climate change, inadequate natural resources. This chapter brings in a distinct focus on environmental noise and its impact on humans. Noise is an unwanted sound characterized by intensity, frequency, periodicity and duration. Environmental noise pollution has become widespread in the form of industrial noise, traffic noise, to name a few. Chronic noise can be placed at parallels with chronic psychological stress and can affect general health and well-being. Further, noise pollution has also been seen to lead to medical, psychological and social issues. To minimize the spread of community transmission of the disease, several countries including India underwent periods of lockdowns and everyone was confined to their homes. The pandemic with its chaos and unpredictability also brought a drastic change in the environment as man-made activities were at its lowest during the quarantine/lockdown periods. This chapter aims to highlight these changes concerning decreased environmental noise. Further, using the lockdown activities as baseline, we propose a positive psychology perspective and principles of mindfulness that can bring about the pro-environmental behaviour during this crucial period.