CORTISOL HORMONE VARIATIONS DUE TO SOUND STRESS: PLEASANT AND UNPLEASANT SOUND

Abstract

The current study concentrates on the severity of noise pollution on public health. During this study cortisol hormone analysis was done for confirmation of stress in animals when exposed to high decibel noise like traffic noise and temple bell clapping. During this experiment, the two-Test sets of animals (T1) set exposed to traffic noise and (T2) set to temple bell clapping were used and a standard set of animal (C) who were not exposed to any loud noise but kept in the silent zone (below 55 dB). During the experiment, it became evident that loud noise did cause a surge of cortisol in the animal in the T1 group but no cortisol was present in the T2 group as well as in the Control group of animals. The presence of cortisol in an animal exposed to traffic noise implies stress in those animals and the absence of cortisol in the T2 group indicates the animals were not stressed even though they were exposed at high decibels noise. Also, the control group display absence of cortisol hormone in their blood. This concludes that sound stress is a result of exposure to pleasant or unpleasant sound irrespective of high decibel sound. This could be the reason why loud music is liked by people without causing any harm but is noise for others. It is a sheer matter of perspective of the individual which cause him/her to be stressed of loud noise.