Dealing with damaging daily din
By Shannon Mullen
Gannett News Service
These days, it's not just factory workers and heavy-equipment operators who have to worry about excessive noise.
Illustration by Martha P. Hernandez • The Honolulu Advertiser
The din of daily life, some audiologists contend, is getting louder. There's more traffic on the road, more airplanes flying overhead, more noisy appliances and electronic gadgets in our homes, more music piped into our ears, more landscaping crews roaring through our neighborhoods.
Loud noise can impair your hearing and raise your blood pressure.
And many of these ordinary sounds — including some particularly piercing children's toys — are loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss.
More than 30 million Americans are exposed to hazardous sound levels on a regular basis, often without realizing it, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
In 2000, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than 5 million 6- to 19-year-olds have impaired hearing directly related to noise.
"We have become a noisy society and that noise is slowly robbing us of our hearing," warns audiologist Tina Mullins of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, a Rockville, Md., organization that certifies audiologists and speech pathologists.
• You can't hear someone 3 feet away. • You have pain in your ears after leaving a noisy area. • You hear a ringing or buzzing (tinnitus) in your ears. • You can hear people talking but can't understand them. You might have a hearing loss if: • You often complain that people mumble when they talk. • You often ask people to repeat what they said. • Your friends or relatives tell you that you don't hear well. • You can't hear the doorbell or telephone. • Others say you play the TV or radio too loud. Source: American Speech-Hearing Association, www.asha.org. — Asbury Park (N.J.) Press
The word noise has a Latin root — nausea. Simply put, noise is unwanted sound, which means there's some subjectivity involved, as any parent with a child in a garage band can attest.
How to know that you have been exposed to noises that are too loud
As cultural historian Hillel Schwartz noted in a 1995 academic paper, "Noise and Silence: The Soundscape and Spirituality," life has always been noisy. Julius Caesar banned chariots from thundering across Rome's cobbled streets late at night, Schwartz writes, and the clanging of church bells was a chronic noise issue throughout Europe until regulations were imposed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Whether or not background noise has increased is hard to say conclusively, but it has certainly changed. We are no longer subjected to the incessant hammering of blacksmiths at their anvils, the flaying of horses, the yammering of street vendors, public tortures and the like, Schwartz observes. But new noises have taken their place: snowblowers, personal watercraft, cell phones, honking horns, Hokey-Pokey Elmo.
Environmentalists call unwanted noise "aural litter" and unless you live deep in the woods, it's almost impossible to avoid. The grassroots Noise Pollution Clearinghouse (www.nonoise.org) thinks the problem has gotten out of hand. Its members are pushing for tougher regulations on such notorious noisemakers as gas-powered lawn equipment and "alarmingly useless" car alarms.
Experts say sounds louder than 80 decibels — a coffee grinder is 84 to 95 decibels, the NPC says, while a lawn mower can range from 88 to 94 — can damage sensitive hair cells in the soft tissue of the inner ear, which relays sounds waves to the brain.
"Sometimes it takes just one exposure," says audiologist Sandra Fields Kuhn.
Once damaged, those hair cells don't recover, though if enough healthy cells remain, a person exposed to a firearm discharge at close range, for example, might only experience a temporary hearing loss.
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association advises parents to inspect toys for excessive noise just as they would for choking hazards. The ASHA says some electronic toys can emit sounds of 90 decibels or more. When held directly to the ear, the noise level can register as high as 120 decibels — the equivalent of a jet airplane at take-off.
An early sign of noise-induced hearing loss, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians, is not hearing high-pitched sounds, such as some conversational voices or small children or the singing of birds. Ringing in the ears, a condition call tinnitus, is often a precursor to permanent hearing loss.
Exposure to excessive noise can have other health consequences besides hearing impairment, audiologists say. Noise can increase blood pressure, accelerate breathing, disturb digestion, intensify the effects of drugs and alcohol, and disrupt sleep (even after the noise stops.) Noise also can cause fatigue, irritability and an upset stomach or ulcer.
Kuhn has noticed that more and more of her patients are people in their 50s and 60s who are losing their hearing because of noise as opposed to advancing age. Some have worked in noisy environments or were exposed to loud noises in the military, but others simply may have attended too many raucous rock concerts in their youth.
Fortunately, thanks to technological advances, today's hearing aids work better and are less obtrusive, making them more acceptable to younger patients.
Audiologists say the best defense against noise-induced hearing loss is to limit your exposure to loud sounds as much as possible. When they can't be avoided, use disposable earplugs: Those can quiet up to 25 decibels of sound, which can mean the difference between damaging noise and a tolerable din.
