Tales from The Social Club: Silence, Socialization, and Sound
Meeting Date and Time: Tuesday, January 28, 2025 from 5 PM to 7 PM
Meeting Location: Murray Hill Diner, 222 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10016
Event Location Website Link: Murray Hill Diner
What differentiated this outing from the vast majority of indoor places we've gone to? A low level of background noise! I cannot emphasize enough how much easier it is to socialize and foster connections with other people when you are not dealing with high levels of noise. In this case, the atmosphere was best described by the old proverb silence is golden, which to me, means it is often better to listen than to speak. A quiet environment made it easier for me to practice my active listening skills. For example, I learned that someone in the group was planning to go to a play with his Dad. Even as Murray Hill Diner became more crowded, my perception of quietness remained.
Interestingly enough, a noisy restaurant was not always the norm. Prior to the late 1990s, most restaurants were relatively quiet. A 2023 Salon column by Columnist Maggie Hennessy stated that this started to change the late 1990s, when a former owner and chef of Babbo named Mario Batali, decided to take the music he and his staff were listening to in their kitchen, and blast it over their customers' heads in the common seating area. Other restaurant owners followed suit in the coming years. This timetable closely follows what my parents recalled when I asked them "if they remembered when restaurant music began to become a problem in NYC." They recalled that happening in the early 2000s. They also recall, that prior to the early 2000s, music was not played at all in restaurants except for live performances such as Jazz at Lincoln Center.
It was also in the early 2000s, that restaurants began to change the ways in which they were designed. Features such as open kitchens, high and bare ceilings, and exposed wood or stone surfaces increased the overall noise level. Some existing restaurants also removed curtains, upholstery, and carpet. Murray Hill Diner, which opened in 2005, was likely not one of them. Note the soft cushion seats in the picture below.
In addition to the restaurant design changes, I was also fascinated to learn about the science of sound.
Sound is measured in units of decibels (dB). Sound measurement begins at 0 dB, which is a measure of the quietest sound someone with average hearing can detect. It gets more intense in the positive direction. When a noise is perceived to double in volume, this corresponds to approximately a 10 dB increase. For reference, this would be the difference between the sound of average office noise (70 dB) and the noise inside of an airplane (80 dB). See the graphic below for examples of sounds you may be familiar with and where they fall on the decibel scale.
But how do we determine if a noise is safer to hear? Well, there are a couple of ways. One is to use some sound judgement (no pun intended): "if something sounds too loud, it is too loud." Another way is to download an app that records decibel levels using the microphone on your smart phone. For a list of apps you can install, feel free to check out the Hearing Health Foundation's website. According to the Hearing Health Foundation, “sounds at or below 70 dB are considered safe for our hearing.”
For a deep dive into some of the science I uncovered in my research for this blog post, see the Author’s Notes on Sound at the bottom of this article. But for now, suffice it to say, our ears are incredibly sensitive and affected by both decibel level and duration of exposure to a sound. High decibel levels can interfere with your ability to hold a conversation in a restaurant, and–depending on the level and duration of exposure–could also cause damage to your hearing.
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I regularly wear noise cancelling headphones and/or earplugs at events because I have ultra sensitive hearing that is a part of me being on the Autism Spectrum.
That being said, my motivation for writing this blog entry is you, the reader. I want to illustrate how loud noises impact everyone, whether you are on the Autism Spectrum or not. My hope is that after you finish reading this you find a pair of earplugs and/or noise cancelling headphones, and place them in your bag or purse for use in noisy environments.
Author’s Notes on Sound
Our ears are very sensitive. According to University of Salford, “The human ear is capable of hearing very quiet (low intensity) sounds and extremely loud (high intensity) sounds. The ratio of intensities between silence and ‘ow that hurts my ears’ is about 1 to 100 trillion.” Consider the concept like this, you are sitting in a quiet room and then all of a sudden, unexpectedly, a bolt of lightning strikes right outside your window and it sends a jolt through your system which hurts your ears.
NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) sets standards for workplace sound safety and states that you can be exposed to a sound level of 85 decibels safely for up to 8 hours as shown in the table below.1 This is the average sound of a noisy restaurant.
For reference, REL stands for Recommended Exposure Limit. Note the units used in this table are now dBA. The A is just a reference to how the data is plotted on a graph. For all practical purposes, you can consider dBA and dB to be measuring the same thing for the purpose of this blog entry. Scientists use dBA (A-weighted decibel) as opposed to others that exist (such as C or Z), to provide more value to frequencies in the center of our hearing and lower weight to frequencies at the margins relative to a flat audio decibel measurement. A-weighting is what is used to determine hearing loss and noise pollution. You can read more about A, C, and Z-weighted decibels by clicking here.
So you might be wondering what the people at NIOSH do? NIOSH is a U.S. federal institute that is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They are responsible for doing research and giving recommendations for the avoidance of work-related injury.
The best way to demonstrate the concept of noise safety is with a graph.
At a high noise level, there is almost no amount of exposure time before hearing damage is likely to occur. Look at how the points are close together and then get far apart as the sound level decreases. As the noise level drops, your ears are able to withstand longer periods of exposure.
Recall how earlier I wrote that when a noise is perceived to double in volume, this corresponds to a 10 dBA increase. For reference, I will now give you some decibel levels with corresponding sounds and exposure times. At 70 decibels (the Hearing Health Foundation's maximum sound level for safe hearing), the exposure time is 48 hours. 70 dBA is the sound of an average conversation. 85 dBA is the average sound of a noisy restaurant. It has an exposure time of 8 hours. 100 dBA is the sound of an automatic hand dryer in which hearing damage can occur after 15 minutes of exposure. The threshold of pain is 140 dBA which occurs in 0.09 seconds. This corresponds to a gun shot.
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