generalspeaking

"There's no reports that I am aware of showing the continued existence of the hum. Some people may say otherwise, but I haven't heard it for almost a year."

"It's not about what you hear, it's about what you feel ... It is literally vibrating your organs, even though most people won't be able to verbalize it that way."

Colin Novak, lead researcher, 2013 flagship study, Canada

For years citizens of Windsor, Ontario, next door to Detroit across the border, complained of a low, pervasive, irritating 'hum', disturbing in its presence, difficult to define as a sound, a vibrating disturbance of unknown origins. Many doubted its existence altogether. but the sound-sensitive and those sensitive to its constant vibration knew better. Called the Windsor Hum it occasioned intense speculation by journalists on both sides of the Canada-U.S border for the past nine years.

That's when an investigation launched by te Government of Canada documented its existence for the first time. And that investigaton was led by lead researcher Colin Novak, engineering professor at University of Windsor. IN recent years the hum was identified as emanating from a U.S.Steel facility located on zug Island, across the river from Windsor's west end. Last year, U.S.Steel announced its intention to scale back its Great Lakes operations.

From that time forward -- Last April -- according to Dr.Novak, the noise vanished as mysteriously as it had arisen. It was no secret to Dr.Novak that the gum had been generated by the blast furnaces operating at highert han-normal capacity. This caused the metallic foundation of the plant to intensely reverberate, hence the hum. Across the world similar phenomena have been document and in the U.S. in particular similar cases exist in Taos, New Mexico and Kokomo, Indiana. The most infamous hum had been documented in 2005 in Auckland, New Zealand.

Wherever the low-slung and pervasive hum occurred, what they all had in common was the description representing a physical sensation more than a sound; a general sense of uneasiness reverberating throughout one's body. The explanation for which can be fund in understanding that the hum arrives in the form of a frequency lower than 30 hertz, the bottom end of the natural hearing perception of humans, called "infrasounds", difficult to detect typically.

Sustained infrasounds such as the Windsor hum could be observed in the subtle movement of windows and walls in affected zones. Infrasounds, according to science, are not likely to be the case of hearing damage, even though they can be irritating to people sensitive to stimuli and acoustic reverberation. The hope now is that U.S.Steel will permanently close its operations from Zug Island and transfer them to a facility elsewhere, spurred by less costs incurred in a newer facility.

Both the U.S. and the Canadian government licensing bodies had realized no success in having U.S.Steel address the problem of the reverberating sound so disturbing to area residents. Michigan's Department of Environment recently reprimanded U.S.Steel for violating a number of emission and pollution regulations, a citation that included exceeding visible emission limits, exceeding emissions of hydrochloric acid, degradation of local air quality and failure to maintain and replace the air filters in the facility, known as scrubbers.