The evolution of noise awareness disseminated through the media until the first ASA anti-noise campaign

Today, there are several worldwide initiatives to raise awareness of the noise problems in people and fauna, but little is known about the first efforts for its advocacy. Since journalism through the media became observers of reality, in the case of noise annoyance due to the lack of medical knowledge, the earliest complaints described the hardships that afflicted people, and only at the end of the 19th century clinical and technological criteria appeared. Therefore, also through some journalists, the media echoed the legal claims made by people, to invite them affected by noise to create societies against noise. Until 1930, a few initiatives were presented with the goal of promoting anti-noise actions, and after the emblematic report of noise levels in New York City recorded with a sound level meter, anti-noise campaigns took on another dimension. Members of the newly created ASA formed a group that dedicated themselves to investigating the problems of noise from technology, and later they realized that the best policy was to create an intermediate society, and thus, in 1940 the “National Noise Abatement Council” was born, whose first activity was the “Noise Abatement Week.” In this paper, a brief summary of these early initiatives will be made, to focus on the work carried out by those ASA Members, some of them ASA founders.