[♪♪♪]
[Makda] If you like Italian, and who doesn't,
you'll like Nico Taverna in Windsor,
Ontario.
The Friday night dinner rush is just getting started.
With a menu that includes wood-fired pizzas,
mouth-watering pastas and a very big portion of noise.
The kind that makes you have to shout,
lip read, or just nod along and pretend you can hear your
friends.
Were you guys able to have a conversation?
Just with Diana.
-[Makda] Is it too much? -Yeah, it was too loud.
I was screaming to talk to the rest of the table.
[Makda] Even Nick, the owner, thinks his restaurant is
too loud.
Margaritas for these guys.
I can't even hear people on the phone.
We have to go to a back room.
[Makda] Let's do a quick test, just to see how noisy it is
right now.
Do you want to press the button?
Sure.
This one?
[Makda] That's a phone app that measures decibels,
how loud things are.
Red means very loud.
And the place is still only half full.
Does that kind of confirm what you're already hearing?
Yeah, very loud.
It's definitely very loud.
[Makda] Loud enough, potentially,
to cause harm.
this right now is a real problem.
So I've got to do something about it.
[Makda] And many of you agree.
We ask Marketplace viewers across Canada about noisy
restaurants.
Nearly 1500 of you sound off.
68% say noise bothers them more than even service or price.
A whopping 91% say restaurants are getting louder.
Our viewers suggest there's a few in particular we should
check out, including big chains.
Places like Jack Astor's, East Side Marios,
Boston Pizza, The Keg and Earls.
So, we visit locations from each one,
twice, in three different cities,
on the same nights.
Our testers use the same phone app to measure noise levels,
taking snapshots of the sound.
We'll name the noisiest in just a bit.
Back at Nico's, a keyboard player has joined the fray as
more people arrive and together, they're putting the din
in dinner.
It's 8 o'clock, and the owner tells us this is peak time.
We just saw a huge party go in.
Let's see how loud it is right now.
So out here.
Now let's go inside.
Prolonged and regular exposure to sound over 85 decibels is
hazardous to your hearing.
Putting restaurant workers most at risk.
It's fast paced.
And, as you can guess, it's pretty loud.
[Makda] Chef Greg mans the grill beneath a loud vent that sucks
out the smoke.
Communication in the kitchen's key for us.
It's very hard to communicate through the sound.
[Makda] Do you ever worry about your hearing?
I know, for instance, my father works in a factory and they're
supposed to get their hearing checked,
yearly.
One day, I will get 'em checked and,
yeah, it's a big worry for me.
[Makda] Imagine if you already have hearing loss.
One of the customers here happens to be an audiologist.
Dee Sehgal says his patients dread noisy restaurants.
It's probably the number one problem amongst people who are
hearing impaired.
[Makda] How does it impact their life?
They start to withdraw.
So, when they get into those complex environments,
instead of having conversations with their loved ones,
friends or family, they start to tune out.
And when they start to tune out, it can have a negative impact on
memory, and on cognition.
It's a very difficult situation for a lot of people.
[Makda] It's open kitchens like this,
and other modern design trends, high ceilings,
hard surfaces, that keeps sound bouncing around,
boosting noise levels in restaurants all over Canada.
Just ask Juan Carlos Bolomey.
He's getting calls for help from lots of places like
Nico Taverna.
And today, it's getting a makeover.
So basically, it's as simple as putting up some panels.
This is an acoustic panel.
[Makda] His company designs these panels to dampen the
noise.
[Juan] Sound travels quite quickly in a space and when it
hits a surface that is highly reflective, it'll bounce off and
continue to the next surface.
In an untreated space, those reflections kind of act as other
people in the room at different places.
So, instead of having 4, now it sounds like you probably have 10
or 15 people.
[Makda] The plan is to install about three dozen ceiling panels
that retail for about $6,800.
I always think things aren't going to work out.
I really hope they do.
'Cause last night, you saw how it was.
I have a headache still from last night from how loud it was.
And it's probably harmful for everybody.
For my staff.
For myself.
[Makda] For the customers maybe?
Maybe for the customers, too
[Makda] Nick says it's a fine line between lively and loudly.
People don't wanna sit in a restaurant that it feels like
a morgue.
They don't want it to be too quiet.
But there's a line you cross.
And we were crossing it quite often.
[Makda] You crossed it last night you think?
Oh, for sure.
[Makda] So what are the consequences of crossing that
line?
Some have compared the dangers of secondhand noise to
secondhand smoke.
So, I'm spending the next 24 hours tracking exactly how much
noise I'm exposed to using this little device,
known as a dosimeter.
It continuously measures the noise around me and will come up
with the average dose I receive in a day.
Picking up a coffee on the way to work.
Passing the endless construction that is Toronto.
Science says my daily average exposure should be below 70
decibels to help avoid problems like hearing loss and
hypertension.
It's a relatively quiet day at the office.
As we begin to assemble this story.
We ask Marketplace viewers across Canada about noisy
restaurants.
But when lunch hour rolls around,
the food court ups my average reading by quite a bit.
There's a few more decibel spikes through the afternoon,
while in the edit suite.
[TV audio] The Friday night dinner rush is just
getting started.
And then things really pick up during the after-work rush hour
on the subway...
..and the street...
..and when shopping.
I catch up with a colleague for Friday night dinner and a big
helping of decibels.
Then finish the day with the latest Hollywood ear-buster.
So, how'd I do?
Your average for the day is over what we recommend as a limit to
protect your hearing.
[Makda] Rick Neitzel is a scientist who focuses on noise
exposure and how it contributes to health problems.
He works out of the university of Michigan,
in the city of Ann Arbor where he says dealing with noise
pollution should be a public health priority.
The World Health Organization and the Environmental Protection
Agency both recommend that we keep everybody under a 24-hour
average of 70.
Yours was almost 78.
That's not uncommon.
So, when we look in urban areas like Toronto,
like Ann Arbor here, we typically see that about nine
out of ten people are over that level that we consider to be
safe from hearing loss.
So, as a result, you are a sort of standard North American
citizen here, where you're getting more noise than we
really think you should, and it's coming,
in your case, from just day-to-day activities.
This is not an exceptionally noisy event or a really noisy
job, it's just your lifestyle.
[Makda] It's worth noting that a small increase in decibels is
actually a huge change in the amount of noise and the
potential for harm.
My exposure for the day averages 78 decibels.
And to our ears, that sounds almost twice as loud as the
recommended 70 decibels.
The highest levels come when I'm out eating.
You did a number of noisy things,
but the two periods that were the loudest were going to lunch
at the food court and going out to dinner at a restaurant.
They really overwhelmed all of the other activities you did in
terms of the noise you got.
[Makda] The restaurant there, we're almost a hundred.
Correct, and that's really the only time your day that you
started to push that hundred decibel limit.
And, again, exceeding a hundred, it's not as though you're going
to have an instantaneous hearing loss,
but we do like to keep your levels as low as possible,
and that is not as low as possible.
[Makda] It's not just hearing loss that's the worry.
Neitzel says noise is linked to all kinds of problems,
once it goes above an average of around 50 decibels.
Should I be worried?
So, if we're talking about 70 decibels here,
below that we're not worried about hearing loss.
But, when we talk about these cardiovascular impacts,
hypertension and heart attacks, we're talking more down in the
45 to 55 decibel range as a 24 hour average.
And, you spent a vast majority of your day over that level.
So, this is an unfortunate thing that we're recognizing,
is that even if we protect your hearing,
we may not be protecting your heart sufficiently.
Hopefully it's reasonably comfortable.
[Makda] Yep.
Okay, great.
And then, we're just going to fire this up.
[Makda] To show the impact noise can have on our hearts,
Neitzel is testing my blood pressure.
110 over 93.
My heart rate is 89 beats per minute.
So, this is your baseline, pre-noise exposure.
[Makda] Okay and I we just need to bring up the noise?
Now we'll do the noise, exactly right.
[Makda] Now, he blasts an audio track of big city sounds,
at a level of 90 decibels.
And after 30 seconds takes another reading.
So, here your blood pressure has now increased to 120 over 95,
and your pulse has gone up from 89 to 96.
[Makda] Wow.
So, you've had a reaction to that very brief stimulus or
sound that you were exposed to.
We're not necessarily concerned about a very short change,
from a human health perspective.
If this is happening hours a day,
though, that starts to become much more concerning.
[Makda] But I knew that was coming,
so why couldn't I control it?
So, your cognitive and your central nervous system simply
cannot screen out noise, to some degree.
Your heart rate and your blood pressure are always going to
respond, that's simply out of your control.
[Makda] Over time, he says, that could mean an increased risk of
heart attack or stroke.
Jeez.
Okay.
I did not expect, I have to tell you,
I didn't expect the levels to change.
I didn't either, actually.
Not by that much.
So, that's frankly somewhat shocking.
[♪♪♪]
[Makda] This is your Marketplace.
We're putting our ear to the ground in noisy restaurants.
Like Nico Taverna in Windsor, Ontario.
Last time we're here, owner Nick Politi is complaining about his
own restaurant.
Just the sound bouncing off everything,
hearing people's voices just cutting through.
It's a real annoying loudness.
[Makda] Decibel readings confirm the racket and so Nick orders up
a restaurant makeover, installing dozens of acoustic
panels on the ceiling.
[Nick] It's made a world of a difference.
[Makda] Do you wanna test out what the noise levels are
like now? -Sure.
[Makda] So, remember last time when it was busy,
we were hitting the mid-eighties.
I like it.
What does it say on the top?
Moderate.
Okay.
[Makda] You're in the moderate levels.
Low 70s, high 70s.
What do you think about that?
I think it's great.
I'm really happy.
Like I said, it-- it was absolutely necessary that I
did this.
[Makda] Nick admits he's been losing customers and money.
You thought the noise was hurting your business?
Oh yeah.
I've heard from people that they couldn't come back.
People, you know, some people are hard of hearing,
already had some issues with hearing and that.
Which there seems to be quite a few people like that.
I already know that I lost some of them.
Hey, how you're doing.
Nice to meet you. What's your name?
-Mike. -Mike?
[Makda] But now he's hearing a different story.
Were you guys able to have an easy conversation?
Absolutely.
I have a hard time hearing out of this ear,
and I was fine.
Awesome.
So, it worked.
My panels worked.
[Makda] So, if Nico's can do it, what about other restaurants?
Like the ones you tell us about?
Nearly 1,500 Marketplace viewers give us feedback on noisy places
they've been and the one that comes up the most is Earls.
It alone gets about 10% of all the complaints and twice as many
as any other restaurant.
When we check, all the big chains have fairly similar noise
levels, often loud, but not hazardous in the short term,
and Earls is loudest.
We share our findings with Earls and they say they appreciate the
feedback but won't come on camera to talk.
They tell us they do use sound absorbing materials and play
softer music in their dining rooms.
If you wanna keep an ear out for yourself.
What do you make of the results?
So, the results were hovering around 88 or 89 decibels.
[Makda] There are consumer apps that do a good job of measuring
decibels.
They're all pretty darn consistent and that gives me a
lot of hope as a scientist, because it means you can trust
the results on your app when you go to a restaurant or when
you're at work or doing something else noisy,
and you can screen and decide, is this level potentially
harmful for me or not.
[♪♪♪]
[Makda] Or just look for places that are trying to turn up
the quiet.
[♪♪♪]