Do you know that you risk of hearing loss? MP3 players are everywhere, and it seems as if everyone plays their players kind of loud. A quick survey on a street of people wearing the headphones yielded typical results:

“Loud enough so I can’t hear anyone around me.”

“Very loud. The people on the train say, ‘Excuse me, can you lower that?’”

Perhaps blasting the volume is not such a good idea.

“If you cranked it up to maximum volume at about a 110 to 120 decibels even a few minutes a day at that problem could over time give you a induced noise hearing loss,” said director of pediatric otolaryngology, Long Island College Hospital.

Noise-induced hearing loss isn’t an immediate problem. The damage creeps up over years.
The issue with MP3 players is actually two fold: the volume of the sound and the time exposed to it.

“85 percent of people that they surveyed turned up the volume regularly to compensate for the trucks and the subway and the noises in the street. We have the ability to place these little ear buds into the ear canal and those are not as good at filtering out the background noise because they don’t always fit snugly so the reaction is to turn up the volume,” said Dr. Rosenfeld.

Given you can store up to three hundred hours of music on a typical MP3 player and the battery lasts twelve hours – and one can turn it up to 100 decibels – it’s up to the consumer to protect one’s hearing, and use the players safely.

The signs of a noise induced hearing loss include ringing in the ears or trouble hearing or understanding things when there is a background noise.

wdtn.com