SSSHHICAGO

This paronomasia is the title of a program designed to bring quiet to a city. It decorates a pamphlet that explains the plan and was recently circulated to the citizens of Chicago, where the city council this summer approved the toughest antinoise code in the U.S. In the eleven weeks since the code was adopted, Chicago's department of environmental control has become the municipal version of the Silent Service, enforcing the new rules with a vengeance.

The job is enormous and complicated. In the Loop, Chicago's downtown area, tall office buildings contain and amplify urban sounds like echo chambers so that the din occasionally reaches 90 decibels, enough to cause permanent damage to hearing in 10% of the people who might be exposed to it for eight hours a day. The slums, with their high population density and aging, ill-maintained automobiles, are often as noisy. Loudest of all is swinging Rush Street, where night after night the go-go clubs and rock bands blare out music measured at more than 115 decibels, the threshold of pain.

Despite Chicago's formidable levels of noise, the citywide crusade for quiet is off to a good start. Environmental officers have swarmed through business and residential areas, recording violations on sensitive decibel meters. Offenders are sent to face judges who can mete out penalties as high as $500 plus six months in jail. As a result of the crackdown, residents are already beginning to notice small but audible changes. Car-pool drivers, instead of impatiently honking their horns, now wait silently for tardy passengers. The once clangorous chimes of St. Peter's United Church of Christ on the Northwest side have been silenced--over the protests of the faithful. A particularly boisterous rooster in the same area has been exiled to the countryside.

Environmental officers are working to correct--rather than penalize--most other routine offenders. Confronted with a case involving a clattering air conditioner, Cosimo Caccavari, the city's top acoustician, asked the owner to draw a floor plan of his house. Then Caccavari suggested moving the air conditioner to another location where it would not face any near neighbor. Similarly, he showed a paint-store owner, whose rooftop ventilators had brought complaints, how to build a noise shield that would stifle the racket. He also proved to officials of an excavating company that the vibrant rat-tat-tat of their pneumatic drills could be muffled.*

Sound Barriers. Still, even the ingenious Caccavari can prescribe nothing but new equipment for the biggest group of noisemakers: motor vehicles. To date, environmental control officers have ticketed 400 vehicles--most of them heavy trucks--for exceeding legal sound barriers of 78 decibels for a car, 84 for a motorcycle and 90 for a truck. The drivers can scarcely believe their ears when they are haled to the curb for a summons. "But officer, I wasn't going too fast," pleaded one truck driver. "No, but you were going too loud," said the cop. Another trucker argued: "Our firm has 45 trucks. Do you mean that we've got to put new mufflers on all of them?" Replied the officer with quiet dedication: "Now you're getting the idea."

* Under the new code, the noise level of equipment like air compressors and pile drivers must be gradually reduced from 94 decibels this year to 80 in 1980.

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