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November 22, 2009
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Noise Induced Hearing Loss and Its Prevention (cont.)

How can a person tell if a noisy situation is dangerous to their hearing?

People may differ in their sensitivity to noise. Nevertheless, as a general rule, noise is probably damaging to the hearing if the noise:

  • makes it necessary to shout to be heard over the background noise,

  • causes ear pain,

  • makes the ears ring, or

  • causes a loss of hearing for several hours or more after exposure to the noise.

In contrast to popular belief, there is no truth to the idea that a person is able to "toughen up" the ears by frequent exposure to loud noise. In reality, cumulative noise in the past has probably damaged the ears to such a degree that a person doesn't hear the noise as much. Unfortunately, no treatment is available for noise-induced hearing loss once the damage has occurred.

How loud can a sound get before it affects hearing?

Many experts agree that continual exposure to more than 85 decibels (dB) is dangerous to the ears. As already mentioned, the decibel is a measure of the intensity of sound. For example:

  • the faintest sound the human ear can detect is labeled 0 dB, whereas the noise at a rocket pad during launch approaches 180 dB;

  • a quiet whisper is approximately 30 dB;

  • normal conversation is 60 dB;

  • a lawnmower is 90 dB; and

  • the sound from an iPod Shuffle has been measured at 115 dBs.

Decibels are measured logarithmically, which means that the sound energy of noise increases by units of 10. Therefore, a dB increase of a sound from 20 to 30 dB is an increase of 10 times, and a dB increase of a sound from 20 to 40 dB corresponds to increase of 100 times (10 times 10).



Next: Do the duration and closeness of exposure to loud noise relate to hearing damage? »

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