Box repels youths, but adults can't hear it

Switch on the small, gray metal box and listen: A sharp, pulsating, high-pitched tone burrows into the ear like a power drill, prompting an agitated, please-shut-that- blasted-thing-off grimace. That's what you hear if you're between the ages of 13 and 25.

If you're not, you might not sense a thing.

Howard Stapleton can't hear the sound he conjured up three years ago. His daughter, Isobel, 15 at the time, had come home in tears from a store in their town in South Wales, after having been harassed by other teens.

The store owner told Stapleton that he and other merchants and customers wanted the young toughs gone, too, but feared a confrontation.

As the security device inventor contemplated the problem, he recalled from his teens the awful buzz of an ultrasound welding machine at his father's glue-plastics factory. He remembered that his complaints about the noise would be met with a quizzical look from workers: "What noise?"

From that impulse to help rid his local market of loiterers came his invention, "the Mosquito," an electronic contraption that emits a high-pitched pulsating sound that can mostly be heard only by teens and people in their early to mid-20s. It works because an age-related hearing loss called presbycusis reduces the ability to hear high-pitched sounds after the late 20s. The device is mostly inaudible to older adults, young children and pets.

In Britain, the Mosquito has become the next big thing in crowd and crime control - and it may one day be coming to a teen hangout near you. The device seems to have ratcheted up the aural warfare that began a few years ago when train stations and merchants in England and elsewhere tried piping in classical music to repel young loiterers. It entered the U.S. market last fall.

The Mosquito emits a sound that can be heard up to 60 feet away for 20 minutes at a time. It can be heard through earphones and over loud music. It is for commercial and official use only, and is never supposed to be used in a residential area or near a bus stop, the manufacturer says.

Young people, meanwhile, have turned the table on the technology. Many have downloaded the sound onto their cell phones, creating a ring tone that they can hear but older adults can't. Teen Buzz, a short Mosquito ring tone, has become among the most downloaded ring tones worldwide. Some use it to alert high school classmates of recently sent text messages. For others, it's come in handy when parents curtail use of their cell phones.

"I was watching an episode of Law and Order the other day, where they called the ring tone 'the bumblebee,'" said Jerry Whiting, a Seattle Web designer who created the ring tone for free downloads on his ad-based site, jetcity orange.com. Since posting the ring tone 18 months ago, Whiting said, the site has received 1,000 hits a month.

"I thought it was a passing fad, but with the saturation of cell phones it turns out that I clearly underestimated the popularity," he said.

The Mosquito regularly ranges from $1,495 to $1,895. RMS Omega Technologies of Hanover in Anne Arundel County, one of the few U.S. retailers, is selling it for $1,250.

One prospective customer, the Calvert County Sheriff's Department in Southern Maryland, thought the apparatus could help clear certain areas of skateboarders, who gather late into the night and disperse when officers arrive, only to return when they leave.

"I don't want to give away the exact locations, but I can say that it will be put up mainly in the northern end of the county," said Sheriff Matt McDonough, who said community leaders plan to purchase the Mosquito this spring. "We're hoping to put a timer on the devices and run them from 10 p.m. to 6 in the morning. Hopefully, that will reduce the disorderly and public dis- turbance calls."

Already, the device has helped with youth crowd control at a school system in Columbia, S.C. Rick McGee, emergency services manager at Richland School District Two, said that the schools purchased two Mosquitos from RMS Technologies two months ago, installing one in a vehicle and mounting the other in a commons area.

"What we like about them is that you can move crowds without getting into a confrontation," McGee said. "We use the car device at sporting events, in the parking lot after the games where people start congregating and the problems start. We'll switch it on, and immediately you'll see heads turn around. They become irritated from the noise, and within about five minutes they've all gone somewhere else."

At his home in Merthyr Tydfil, in Wales, Stapleton tried to re-create the sound from his youth. He tested various attempts on his children, until they responded at a tone of 17 kHz tone at 85 decibels (dB). He then ramped up the irritating sound by making it peal at four times a second. Stapleton ultimately manufactured the Mosquito for commercial and law-enforcement use worldwide under his company, Compound Security Systems.

Since then, he's sold more than 4,000 of them and earned the equivalent of a half-million dollars, he says. To his dismay, people around the world have converted the sound into a ring-tone without his permission - including youngsters who withstand the irritating sound long enough to record it on their cell phones or post it online. Others, he says, are abusing the Mosquito, setting up "kid-free zones" by running the device 24 hours a day.

Stapleton says that at 85 dB, the sound is equivalent to heavy traffic and would only do permanent ear damage if someone were exposed to it for eight continuous hours. The level is also the U.S. federal noise standard to which workers can be exposed without wearing protective gear.

"One-time exposure to 85 dB intensity level will not necessarily cause hearing loss," said Colleen E. Ryan-Bane, an audiologist at Johns Hopkins. "However, prolonged, consistent exposure to 85 dB and above will cause hearing loss."

UK-based human rights groups have complained that the device discriminates against young people. Last month, several launched a campaign called "Buzz Off," demanding that merchants shut off the more than 3,500 Mosquitos across the country. Some have labeled Stapleton "anti-kids" for creating the device.

"I am not anti-kids," Stapleton said. "I have five of my own."

That reaction may grow in the United States if the device catches on.

"We would have to look closely at this new technology, but the idea of it may raise questions about the right to assembly and age discrimination," said Meredith Curtis, public outreach director of the ACLU of Maryland.

For now, Guy Worthingon, vice president of surveillance at RMS Omega Technologies, said that the device has drawn rave response with each demonstration. The 44-year-old executive has never heard the machine, though. To demonstrate its impact, he and a colleague switched it on in their conference room.

Within seconds, salesman Justin Wild bolted in, wincing and motioning for the Mosquito to be shut off.

He's 22.

joseph.burris@baltsun.com

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