Anyone who lives in Bensenville, Illinois, knows about the “Bensenville pause.” According to long-time resident Pat Johnson, it goes like this: As the roar of a jetliner departing from nearby O’Hare International Airport becomes a blasting shriek, the residents of this small town stop talking and wait. Conversations pick up as the plane goes by, but they soon pause again; planes fly over Bensenville every three to four minutes. “Sometimes, it’s hard to fall asleep,” Johnson says. “You do, but then you wake up again. The noise interrupts churches and classrooms. There are times you can’t even talk on the phone.” The case of Bensenville may be extreme, but it’s not unusual. Today, millions of Americans suffer from noise pollution caused by planes, road traffic, car alarms, boom boxes, stereos, and many other volume-enhanced contraptions, some of them earsplitting by design. Until recently, for example, Sony Corporation marketed amplifiers and speakers with a “Disturb The Peace” advertising campaign that boasted of “new ways to offend.” Les Blomberg, who directs the nonprofit Noise Pollution Clearinghouse, refers to unwanted noise as aural litter or audible trash —“That is how people experience community noise: as someone else’s garbage thrown into their space,” he says. In many developed countries, such as some member nations of the European Union, governments have stepped in to protect citizens from this aural assault with regulations that set maximum sound levels for construction equipment, vehicles, and airplanes. Switzerland has gone so far as to prohibit aircraft departures between 11:30 p.m. and 5:00 a.m., except in unusual and unforeseen cases. Yet Americans seeking relief from noise pollution are remarkably powerless.