The citywide concrete truck drivers’ strike hit the end of its first week on Tuesday, with slowdowns and work stoppages continuing at construction sites. But on the Brooklyn streets adjacent to the Quadrozzi Concrete Corporation, one of the city’s largest concrete plants, most residents barely even noticed.

It did not matter that there were no concrete trucks rumbling along the narrow roads near Smith and Ninth Streets. Or that the plant’s steep conveyor belt, which dumps sand and gravel into metal holding tanks from a height of seven stories, was silent, frozen in place. Because in this area — surrounded by the elevated platform of the F and G trains, the raised roadway of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a scrapyard and a fuel depot — loud is a relative term.

“It’s the same as usual,” said Maya Chichinadze, who lives on the second floor of a three-story row house directly across Smith Street from Quadrozzi Concrete. A moving truck thundered down the street. She raised her voice slightly. “It’s a little bit loud, but it’s New York. It’s like this everywhere, right?”

Around this industrial zone, there is a racket 24/7. Each time a truck rolls into the fuel depot a block away from Ms. Chichinadze’s street, brakes squeal. Three city buses — including the new shuttle to the Ikea store in Red Hook — regularly rumble by.

Then there are the fire engines. And the ice cream delivery truck outside the bagel shop on the corner. And the city transportation trucks headed for the road work zone under the expressway at Hamilton Avenue and Smith Street.

“Every time the trucks go by, my computer is shaking,” said Jennifer O’Hanlon, 30, who works at Apex Limousine on Hamilton Avenue, opposite the road construction, and has noticed no difference in noise since the strike began. The sound of trucks hitting the metal plates on the roadway is particularly jarring, she said.

“At some point you don’t notice the difference,” Ms. O’Hanlon said. “Then you go to New Jersey or Staten Island and it’s so quiet, and you’re like, what happened to the noise?”

Concrete plant noise, for example, is not nearly as loud as, say, 75 school-age children growing up on a single Brooklyn block. That comparison was made by Kim Esposito, 50, who has lived her entire life near the corner of Nelson and Smith Streets, about two blocks from Quadrozzi’s, and remembers a time when every house around hers seemed filled with children.

The tally of children was made 40 years ago by Ms. Esposito’s aunt Stella Orefice, 78, who was born on the same block.

Ms. Esposito and Ms. Orefice sat on lawn chairs near the curb on Tuesday — as they do every summer — and remembered the old days. “There was much more noise then,” Ms. Orefice said.

One thing that did not add to the noise level was the nearby picket line. At 12:30 p.m., six workers on strike wearing Teamsters Local 282 placards chatted and cooked chicken on an open-air grill near a tent. An hour or so later, they walked silently back and forth near the plant’s gate. By 2 p.m., they had dismantled their tent and some walked inside Quadrozzi’s grounds.

Late Tuesday night, in a joint statement, the union and the Association of New York City Concrete Producers said progress had been made in contract talks.

Business was down a little in the delis around the plant, but if there was a silver lining to the strike, the shop workers said, it was the noticeable decrease in the amount of fine dust that seems to cover everything in the shops, no matter how often they clean.

“Dust has been down, way down,” said Victor Carino, 25, who was manning the counter at Line Bagels and often makes deliveries to Quadrozzi. “Usually, there’s a big dust cloud around lunchtime. We have to keep our door closed.”

The dust has gotten so bad at the Smith and Ninth Deli and Grocery that Saleh Ahmed, whose job description includes mopping the floors, has called the city to complain. The problem, he said, is compounded by the bus drivers who leave their engines idling at the stop in front of his store. The buses kick up all the grime collected in the gutter.

“About the dust, if the drivers don’t work, it’s good,” he said. “If they work, it’s no good. You can ask anyone.”

He paused.

“I mean, the drivers are friends and customers,” Mr. Ahmed said. “Everyone needs to make money and work. But please, less dust.”