
However, when it comes to environmental stressors associated with disease, noise pollution has been identified as one of the most significant factors. The health and well-being of an urban population are strongly influenced by the characteristics of the urban systems where factors such as density of houses, the presence of green spaces, urban heat island effects, population densities, traffic, air pollution, and noise pollution all have an impact. Reduction of stress in cities using masking with natural sounds requires further studies with not only larger samples but also sufficient methods to detect potential sex differences. This result could be attributed to the stress-reducing effect of the visual VR environment, to the noise levels being higher than 47 dBA (a level known to make masking ineffective), or to the respondents finding bird songs stressful. All three soundscapes, however, significantly reduced stress. No significant difference in stress recovery was found between the soundscapes although a tendency for less stress in “bird song” and more stress in “traffic noise” was noted.
NATURE BIRDS SOUNDS DOWNLOAD SKIN
The soundscapes-“bird song”, “bird song and traffic noise”, and “traffic noise”-were played during a 10 min recovery period while their skin conductance levels were assessed as a measure of arousal/stress. In this study, while respondents ( n = 117) watched a 360° virtual reality (VR) photograph of a park, they were exposed to different soundscapes and mild electrical shocks. All previous studies on masking noise use self-evaluation data rather than physiological data. Natural soundscapes, such as bird songs, have been suggested to potentially mitigate or mask noise. Noise from city traffic is one of the most significant environmental stressors.
