The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment And The Tuning Of The World (36 page)

Obviously it would be impractical to present a detailed analysis of all contemporary noise legislation here, so we will have to be content to touch on some of its aspects.

Many countries (for instance, Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Turkey and Venezuela) have national legislation which may or may not be supplemented by municipal by-laws. In Britain, for instance, the Noise Abatement Act of 1960 and the Noise Insulation Regulations of 1973 are enforceable by every authority in England, Scotland and Wales. In other countries (such as Canada, Australia and parts of the U.S.A.) general legislation is drafted by the provinces or states for adoption or embellishment by municipalities. Elsewhere the matter may be left entirely up to the municipalities or arrangements between various levels of government may be worked out. Sorting out these peculiarities on an international scale is an exceedingly difficult if not impossible task, but I have tried to indicate some of the principal features of the various types of legislation in the following list. To show some general differences as clearly as possible, the communities have been arranged by continent.
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Civic Noise Abatement Legislation Around the World

	No anti-noise legislation
	O Nuisance or other type of by-law with some reference(s) to noise
	State or national health or environmental protection legislation, with some provision for noise
	Anti-noise by-law
	Qualitative legislation
	Quantitative legislation
	Community considering or engaged in preparation of new anti-noise legislation
	Quantitative legislation planned

From the list we can see that there is a considerable amount of anti-noise activity on all continents. Much of this interest is recent, as can be seen from the following graph, which gives the total number of pieces of legislation passed each year by the communities listed.