Dr. Rodney Schmaltz

It is difficult.

You need specialized mics for that, and they're quite expensive.

But if you want to see if there's some infrasound, which you can do if you just light a candle or have a lighter, and the flame starts to bend kind of in the middle, that's a sign that there's infrasound.

And if it kind of bends and then starts turning almost, it looks like it's turning, that's a good sign there's infrasound as well.

So I won't tell you how much, but at least you'd know that there's a good chance that there's some infrasound present.

The spinning flame does seem ghost-like, but I assure you it's not.

It is caused by infrasound.

We are.

There's infrasound all around us.

Traffic generates infrasound.

Subways could generate it.

Heavy machinery.

So it's around.

One interesting aspect of our study is to also look at it in the context of noise pollution.

So is this infrasound impacting people?

Now, I don't want to go beyond our data, so I can't definitively say, but what we found was that at least in a five-minute exposure, cortisol levels went up a little bit.

Now, it could be the case that when people are exposed to it for longer periods of time, maybe they habituate.

Or it could be the case that maybe over longer periods of time that there's this kind of cumulative effect and people just feel some stress.

So we know there's some research showing that people tend to feel more stress in urban rather than rural environments.

But this wouldn't explain all of that, but maybe it would be a small piece of the puzzle.