Noise may endanger employees' health.

• Position: Workplace - Brief Article

For most office workers today, the dream of the big corner office is far cry from reality. Instead, current trends in office design have relegated 25,000,000 Americans to open-plan office space, or "cube farms," where a sense of teamwork and camaraderie may flourish--but noise distractions and potential health hazards do so as well. According to a Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., study, working in a moderately noisy office with ringing telephones, worker conversations, the sounds of office equipment whirring, and drawers opening and closing may lead to heart disease since workplace noise causes heart-damaging stress hormones to become elevated.

"Open-plan space is the current `fashion' in office design, partly because people believe it is more cost-effective, but also because it is conducive to the team concept many organizations have adopted," indicates Jack Heine, CEO of Cambridge (Mass.) Sound Management, an acoustical engineering and personal sound management company. "Whatever the impetus, more and more of these open offices are being built, which means there are more and more distractions and potential health hazards keeping workers from producing at their most efficient level."

In another study, conducted for the American Society of Interior Designers, conversational noise was the number-one complaint of office workers and an overwhelming 70% said they would be more productive if there were noise distractions. Similarly, in a study by...