Horns, sirens, construction, ventilation systems, exhaust pipes, leaf blowers, water jets, lawn mowers… Noise everywhere. Like sonic attacks. “And the beeps of cars, checkouts, turnstiles, badge readers… Who invented these beeps? »storm Hélène Doury, a young Parisian retiree, who never goes out without her otic shields: two small beads of wax to soften in the palm of the hand before slipping them into the ears. “Real eyelids that isolate meformulates this former communicator. Pleasure in wearing them ostensibly on the plane, the train, the metro, to say to the noisy guy and the noisy woman: “I’m fucking with you.” Anxiety when I don’t have them with me. »
Each year, 60 million earplugs are manufactured in a small factory in Palaiseau (Essonne), and distributed in France, but also in Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom. The famous 100% tricolor brand, whose name is used generically – like Frigidaire or Post-it – holds more than 60% of the national hearing protection market. Following the confinements linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, which revealed to everyone the virtues of silence, the SME experienced sales records. “We note an increase of 20% over the last year, between March 2022 and March 2023, with a peak during the summer”, specifies Stéphane Rosen, marketing manager. According to the latest Harris Interactive study on the subject, in 2018, the followers of hearing obstruction are distributed homogeneously across the entire territory and within different age groups. Women would be a little more numerous.
“Public policies do not pay the same attention to the fight against noise as to air pollution”deplored, in April in The world, Fanny Mietlicki, director of Bruitparif, an organization responsible for measuring noise pollution in Ile-de-France. The damage linked to noise (on health, property depreciation, loss of productivity at work, etc.) was estimated at 147.1 billion euros per year by the Ecological Transition Agency and the National Noise Council, in 2021. An Ile-de-France resident would lose on average a year of healthy life due to exposure to noise. Faced with this acoustic danger, the earplug proves to be an essential weapon.
A bubble
In addition, it allows “access to a bubble, a protective cocoon, an almost meditative state”, describes Camille (who, like other interlocutors, wishes to remain anonymous). For Marie, it is about“a renewal, the possibility of being lulled by the sound of [s]we heart and [s]breathing, peace.” Noise-canceling foams become intimates, “Kiki balls”, as Nicolas, a 53-year-old Parisian architect, nicknamed them, essential for “sift the noises that come [lui] squat the brain.”
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