Barcelona It is one of the cities that attracts the most tourists. And one of the best valued by visitors. However, Barcelona also has shadows. One of them, excess noise. And according to a report prepared by Mimi Hearing Technologies GMbH under the name of ‘The Worldwide Hearing Index’Barcelona is the seventh noisiest city in the world. The first in this ranking is the Chinese city of Canton.
This list of the noisiest cities on the planet has been drawn up based on figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the numbers of SINTEF, a research organization based in Norway. The list is headed by the Chinese city of Canton. They follow him New Delhi (India) and Cairo (Egypt). The top 10 is completed, in order, Bombay (India), Istanbul (Türkiye), Beijing (China), Barcelona (Spain), Mexico City, Paris and Buenos Aires.
The study also figures the average hearing loss for each city, which was ranked from 0 to 1, with 0 assigned to the city with the lowest average hearing loss and 1 to the city with the highest. The noise pollution levels of each city were classified in the same way. And these two statistics were combined to create the Combined Hearing Loss Indexthe number by which the results are classified.
In the case of Barcelona, the average hearing loss is 0.65 and the level of noise pollution is 0.71 for a Combined Hearing Loss Index of 1.36.
More than 80 dB on main streets
The data offered by this report confirms what was already progressing ‘Study on the noise level and the environment in Spain’, prepared by UMusic, which pointed out that some of the main roads in the city exceed 80 decibels. To these records in the Gran Via, General Miter Round, Diagonal, Sarrià Avenue either Via Laietana we must add the peaks that imply sounds like horn of a car (110dB), the plays (100dB) or the ambulance siren (107dB).
