How Can Sound Damage Your Ears?

Dec 26, 2015 | By Jessica Martinez
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www.livestrong.com...
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Damage
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The most common cause of hearing loss is age, followed closely by internal damage due to exposure to loud noise. Sudden noises, such as an explosion, a gunshot or a firecracker, can cause immediate hearing loss, which can be temporary or permanent. Also, sustained exposure to moderately loud noises, such as lawnmowers, power tools or loud music, can cause cumulative and progressive hearing loss.[emphasis added]
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Harmful Noise Effects

Prolonged exposure to loud noise slowly damages the hair cells -- sensory receptors for sound and body position-- that line the ear's basilar. The cells send information to the brain through the cochlear nerve. Once damaged, these cells do not regenerate. Loud noises can also damage the cochlear nerve and impede it from sending auditory signals to the brain. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), noises at or below 75 decibels are generally considered safe, even with long-term exposure. However, prolonged exposure to 85 decibels or above can cause ear damage.
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To put this in perspective, the sound of normal conversation is about 60 decibels, heavy traffic is about 85 decibels, your lawnmower is abut 90 decibels and firecrackers, gunshots and rock concerts range from 110 to 150 decibels.
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My notes:

--Difficulty hearing clearly folks 2 feet away? It's a sign of a problem.
--Tinnitus can result from too much exposure to loud noise. Some tinnitus problems can then be life-long--virtually never going away.

--Some folks are oblivious until tested.
--Prevention is doable, usually, and is far better than the rest of one's life significantly to greatly & increasingly deaf.

Here's my own commentary from somewhat diligently researching this topic to try and deal with church music that was beyond OSHA limits and abusively assaultive in church after church--fiercely defended by the music minister, head pastor and soundboard bloke--in one case--the soundboard bloke being essentially an aging hippy with significant deafness already!!!

**imho, Allowing children to listen to MP3 players etc. at above 85db is, imho, criminal neglect--sentencing the child to a lifetime of increasing deafness.

**Listening to sounds--including music--for more than 15 minutes at above 90-95db will cause lasting, permanent damage. The trouble is--it may not be detectable (except by professional testing) until it accumulates for a decade or 3. By then, IT IS TOO LATE

**Loud music is literally physiologically, psychologically, emotionally addictive and has, essentially, the SAME PHYSIOLOGICAL IMPACTS in the body as drugs trigger in a drug abuser

**Cranking the volume up because one is already partially deaf can merely increase and hasten more complete deafness. . . . particularly if the volume listened to is 85db or higher.

**One church service I was in--the music was PAINFUL at the BACK of the auditorium. I didn't have my db meter then but it had to be at about 125db. That's absurd and abusive--particularly to small children who don't have any choice about being subjected to it.

**Some loud frequencies have correlated with internal organ damage.

**Guess what, "men" . . . Loud mufflers, loud car stereos and loud Harley's do NOT increase the length of your 'manhood' even the width of a hair . . . regardless of the delusional emotions fooling you that they do.

**I believe that getting multiple generations of folks to zone out on loud music has been a deliberate strategy of the PTB to further anesthetize, dumb-down; neuter; manipulate in devious destructive ways the general populace that might otherwise stand in the way of their tyrannical schemes.

**Listening to loud music for any significant period has to at least partially neuter the CAPACITY to detect nuances, color, variety in the melody and sub-melodies. At some point, it all mushes together into more or less one bleak not-very-melodious cacophony of mostly undifferentiated NOISE.

**Most sane folks not addicted to loud music on being assaulted in public by such--shake their heads at the folks so foolishly abusing their own ears and then assaulting all within earshot as though the loud loving folks had a right to assault those nearby.

**Rich melodies at reasonable volume enrich the soul, the heart and close relationships.

**Teeth rattling, bone-jarring noise is destructive to health, to peace, to serenity and potentially to relationships.

**Rationalizing destructive volume levels is nonsensical, ignorant, terminally uninformed/clueless and generally crass, low class and uncouth.

**Yeah . . . this is a pet hobby horse of mine. I'm trying to hold on to the hearing I have left--which is pretty good for a 69 year old who didn't enjoy loud music when I was a teen in the 1960's.

what you say................speak up

Spent too many of my younger years around rock & roll and race cars.

I pay for it now.

FYI, the reason Brian Johnson had to quit AC/DC wasn't the rock & roll, the hearing damage was done by his love of auto racing.

a reply to: abe froman

Interesting factoid about AC/DC bloke.

Thanks.

What percentage of your hearing do you think you have left? What frequencies are most absent in your hearing?

Does a hearing aid help?

a reply to: BO XIAN

It's left ear Tinnitus, approx. 40% hearing loss.

Lipo-Flavonoids seem to help.

a reply to: abe froman
Purchase a set of foam earplugs . Wear them as much as possible. Amazing what that can do.

a reply to: BO XIAN

I've lost count with the number of marine engineers (especially the older generation) that suffer from hearing loss due to their work environment. Naturally earmuffs are a safety requirement in the engineroom however this was not always the case nor is it always ideal to be wearing them when working on some aspects.

Either way, it's loud - constantly.....and even with the latest Siemens or CAT diesel-electric generators running at anchor (without the necessary propulsion ancillaries running) it's still only possible to work without protection for a few minutes at a time - it is literally like standing next to a huge thumpin' speaker at a Metallica or Rammstein concert - all day, every day for months at a time!!!!

a reply to: BO XIAN

I'd still love to see proof of your doctorate.

This just seems like a slight against local churches. I get it's fashionable to be a militant atheist, but are you really trying to claim that churches in the UK (bloke) are damaging people's eardrums?

Again, I'd LOVE to see some ACTUAL proof you have a doctorate.

a reply to: abe froman

Interesting about the Lipo-Flavonoids. Any idea of the mechanism that they help through?

One of my closest Chinese Friends has a chronic tinnitus problem.

Have you decreased your exposure to loud sound to protect what's left of your hearing?

Awesome I was going to look it all up (btw work & ATS I will read it all when I get home .. love the other two threads too ) I have a horrible habit of pumping up music it's the only way I can clearly focus in car where people can't complain or headphones last couple of weeks it literally hurts so bad yet I can't stop

a reply to: Domo1

I'm not about to show you proof of my Doctorate.

At this point--your skepticism is . . . your own problem, imho. That you can't or won't be that discerning from what I write . . . is an interesting phenomenon in itself.

IIRC, I provided Springer with it many years ago. He may well have forgotten it's been so long ago.

My housemate of 8+ years also saw proof of my doctorate and verified it on here but that, too, was ancient history on ATS.

I think one of my students did the same.

Most folks can tell just by reading what I write.

The churches were and are in the American Southwest. Most are Pentecostal in flavor. One pastor insisted on loud music because "the people pray harder." This was the same pastor that said that ALL manipulation was demonic. Sigh.

I'm far from an atheist.

BTW, it's against ATS T&C to more or less ask for or demand identifying information of a member.

a reply to: realnewsrealfunny

Sounds like an addiction level problem, to me.

You WILL stop, when you can no longer hear any sound, at all.

Why wait until then?

a reply to: Gothmog

Talking about "ear plugs", i have used them for the last 18 years living here in Indonesia. ONLY to suppress the bla-bla-bla of the local mosque around 4.30AM every morning.

a reply to: tommo39

I sometimes used them and was tempted to use them more often . . . when the loud wailing screeching of a 'moving the gods' parade or funeral went by on the Taipei streets. Thankfully, I was in an inner courtyard of a tall building so it wasn't too bad.

a reply to: BO XIAN

How Can Sound Damage Your Ears?

Sound is a frequency.

The greater the sound level (volume to you and me) the less time your ears can be exposed to it. Exposure to a noise level of 300 decibels for 10 seconds I think it is, will kill you.

a reply to: BO XIAN

My issue is cross noise. In the right conditions, I can hear a pin drop at the end of the street. But in a crowded place, even one in which no music is playing, I will have difficulty hearing my conversation partner over a distance of two to three feet. I will, however, hear snippets of every other conversation in the room.

a reply to: Azureblue

Sound 85db or louder begins to fry the tiny hairs in the inner ear which registers the sound and sends the signals about the sound to the brain. Once those hairs are fried, they don't recover.

Sound of sufficient loudness can fry such hairs instantly.

Lesser sound volumes but above 85db will eventually fry such hairs over varying time periods of said exposure.

a reply to: BO XIAN

@BO QUOTE: "gunshots and rock concerts range from 110 to 150 decibels". If this is so them noise from the local mosque 100m from our house would have to be in the 130-140 range.( I close all doors/windows) I go elsewhere ever 1-2 months to escape this rubbish. Unfortunately, "Noise Pollution" is unheard of in Indonesia. Cheers....

a reply to: TrueBrit

I think my hearing is still a lot like yours.

What's funny to me . . . my former housemate has a real hearing problem. She is FINALLY realizing she needs a hearing aid to manage her cashier's job well. She could have a terrible time hearing normal level conversation 2-5 feet apart. But sometimes hear whispers that her paranoia had picked out. LOL. Her 80+ year father was worse . . . worse hearing--except that he seemingly miraculously could hear whispers about him 10-12 feet away. Mystifying. LOL.

a reply to: tommo39

What's about as offensive to me is how much of Asian noise pollution is

soooooooooooo screechy and discordant! LOL.

A lot of Chinese traditional/classical music is wonderfully melodious and played at reasonable volumes.

Some of Asian "music" . . . including Chinese . . . is horribly screechy.