If you’ve ever lived next to a railway, a highway or in a busy city you probably know all about noise disturbance or noise pollution. But how bad can it actually get? Here’s a list of the most noisy cities in the world, is yours on it?

The World Hearing Index was created by the guys of Mimi, a digital hearing app. They found that the average ‘city dweller’ has a hearing loss equivalent of 10 to 20 years older than his own age. In the index, the data from the app is used, and plotted with data from the World Health Organisation.

50 cities are on this list: the first one is the most noisy, the last one is the least. If you want to check out all the data, that’s possible here.

The list

1. Ghanzou
2. Delhi
3. Cairo
4. Mumbai
5. Istanbul
6. Beijing
7. Barcelona
8. Mexico City
9. Paris
10. Buenos Aires
11. Moscow
12. Shanghai
13. Saint Petersburg
14. Taipei
15. Rome
16. Madrid
17. Hong Kong
18. Los Angeles
19. Seongnamsi
20. Singapore
21. Manchester
22. Dubai
23. Johannestown
24. London
25. San Francisco
26. Birmingham
27. Chicago
28. Melbourne
29. Frankfurt am Main
30. Houstoun
31. Hannover
32. New York
33. Milan
34. Seoul
35. Glasgow
36. Sydney
37. Berlin
38. Tokyo
39. Liverpool
40. Stuttgart
41. Amsterdam
42. Cologne
43. Portland
44. Hamburg
45. Dusseldorf
46. Stockholm
47. Munich
48. Oslo
49. Vienna
50. Zurich

Noise pollution can be the worst environmental

problem in the next twenty years

The first place is for Ghanzou, a city in the South of China with 13 million inhabitants. The second and third worst sound polluted cities are Delhi in India and Cairo in Egypt, respectively. The only European city in the top 10 of most noisy cities is Barcelona, while the top 5 most silent cities are all European. The worst city of the United States is Los Angeles on place 18, while the best is Portland on place 43.

The sources of noise pollution of course differ per city, but it’s mostly because of machines and industrialization, and transportation like trains or motorized traffic.

All of this noise gives a huge problem for public health: the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that approximately 360 million people worldwide suffer from hearing loss, 32 million of whom are children. In the Netherlands, experts have warned that noise pollution can be the worst environmental problem in the next twenty years, if we don’t do anything about it.

If you live in one of these noisy cities or are affected by a lot of noise pollution, there is probably not a lot you can do about the noise itself. But, remember that you can always protect your ears with the right earplugs and also remember that hearing damage is irreversible. So be careful and think about your ears, before it’s too late.