Loud Sounds May Cause Hearing Loss

This holiday season if you hear sleigh bells ring and angels sing, the Medical Society of the State of New York advises you to make sure that they are not too loud. According to information recently reported in a Harvard Medical School newsletter, one-third of the cases of hearing loss are caused by routine exposure to very loud noise.

Although hearing ability decreases with age, men’s decreases more than women’s and whites’ decreases more than blacks’ and hispanics’ - half of the high school students surveyed in 2006 by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association also had symptoms of hearing loss. The cause was attributed to over-exposure to excessively loud noise. Loud noise damages sensory hair cells in the ear, and, unfortunately, they do not regenerate. Other causes of hearing loss are genes, birth defects and side effects of medication.

To avoid future hearing loss, adults and teens should protect themselves from noises louder than 80 decibels (dB). According to the Harvard newsletter, sounds of 80 dB are believed to be safe for healthy adults regardless of length of exposure. Sounds of 91 dB should be limited to two hours, sounds of 100 dB to fifteen minutes, and sounds of 120 dB to no more than nine seconds. Safe levels for children are not yet known.

Decibel Levels Chart of Common Sounds

Following are the decibel levels of some common sounds:
20 dB - Watch ticking
30 dB - Whispering
40 dB - Leaves rustling, refrigerator humming
50 dB - Neighborhood street, average home
60 dB - Dishwasher, normal conversation
70 dB - Car, alarm clock, city traffic
80 dB - Garbage disposal, noisy restaurant, vacuum cleaner, outboard motor, hair dryer
85 dB - Factory, screaming child, portable stereo at high volume
90 dB - Power lawn mower, highway driving in a convertible
100 dB - Diesel Truck, subway train (outside, not as a passenger), chain saw 120 dB - Rock concert, propeller plane, portable stereos on maximum volume 130 dB - Jet plane (100 feet away), air-raid siren
140 dB - Shotgun blast, explosion

Symptoms and Treatment

Symptoms of hearing loss include a perception that people are mumbling or speaking too softly, difficulty in following conversations, ringing in the ears and feeling the need to turn up the volume of radios, TVs, etc. If you or a loved one are experiencing some of these symptoms, MSSNY recommends that you consult your family physicians who may send you to a physician who specializes in treating hearing loss, called an otolaryngologist or eye, ears, nose and throat (EENT) doctor.
Treating for hearing loss includes hearing aids, which, thanks to modern technology, are much smaller than they used to be and more capable of discriminating wanted sounds and filtering out unwanted sounds. Current experiments indicate that physicians may soon also be able to administer gene therapy that will result in the regrowth of hearing sensor cells.
In the meantime, further damage to the ears can be prevented by wearing earplugs when exposed to loud noises - and by turning down the volume.

This information is provided by the Medical Society of the State of New York (MSSNY). For more health-related information and referrals to physicians in your community, log on to MSSNY’s website at www.mssny.org or contact your local county medical society.