May 19--"What did you say?" "Excuse me?" "Could you repeat that, please?" If bad listening habits don't change, increasingly younger people will be the ones regularly asking those questions, said Dr. Rick Love, a Montgomery physician.
"I think everyone should be concerned," said Love, CEO of Otolaryngology Associates and Audiology Associates in Montgomery. He currently can be heard on local radio stations talking about the importance of "turning it down" during May, which is Better Hearing and Speech Month, and all year.
He and other hearing experts agree that some of the biggest and most recent threats to hearing health are personal audio devices such as MP3 players.
Love says everyone can remember being exposed to a sudden, extremely loud noise -- a gunshot, a backfiring engine, a nearby firecracker exploding -- and the immediate hearing effects that follow, such as ringing in the ears or the inability to hear certain sounds.
But over time, noises that aren't nearly that loud but still steadily pounding, such as rock and hip-hop music piped in through tiny ear buds, can actually have the same damaging effects as those sudden blasts of sound, he said.
"The louder the noise is, the shorter the duration required to cause irreversible hearing damage," he said. "The problem with iPods and other MP3 players is that kids listen to them all the time."
Love said he and his colleagues see a lot of young people -- teens, college students and young adults -- with hearing problems.
"If they slow down their exposure and do what we call 'conservation' to try to preserve their hearing, they may be able to catch it so that it doesn't become worse and worse," he said.
Dangerous decibels
Sound intensity is measured in decibels (dB). The decibel scale is enormous, registering everything from a whisper to a jet engine (the latter is about 1 trillion times more powerful than the former). On the scale, total silence registers at 0 dB; a gunshot or firecracker is around 140 dB.
On a recent podcast, Dr. James F. Battey Jr., director of the National Institute on Deafness and other Communications Disorders (NIDCD), said researchers who have studied hearing loss in the workplace have found that a person who is exposed to noise levels at 85 decibels or higher (the typical noise generated by a lawn mower or leaf blower) is at risk for cumulative noise-induced hearing loss.
An MP3 player running at its maximum volume is roughly 105 decibels, Battey said. While that may not seem to be a significantly higher rate than 85 decibels, it's actually 100 times more intense. That's because scientists measure decibels by a logarithmic scale. For instance, sounds at 100 decibels can cause damage after 15 minutes of unprotected exposure, but sounds at 110 decibels can cause permanent hearing loss after just 1 minute of exposure.
NIDCD, a division of the National Institutes of Health, recently launched a campaign called "It's a Noisy Planet: Protect Their Hearing," with information available on its Web site, www.noisyplanet.nidcd.nih.gov. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), which is participating in "It's a Noisy Planet," also has its own noise-induced hearing loss awareness effort, called "Listen to Your Buds" (www.listentoyourbuds.org).
Love said the American Academy of Otolaryngology has sent advisories to electronics manufacturers to encourage them to put limitations on their equipment -- specifically, determining "how loud loud can be." One encouraging sign is that someone is listening, including the Consumer Electronics Association, which supports the "Listen to Your Buds" movement when it comes to personal audio devices.
Turn it down
It's not always easy, but Love said parents can help their iPod-dependent children and teens save their hearing.
In the car, for instance, "A good rule of thumb is, if you're sitting in the front seat and you can hear the music of your child in the back seat, it's too loud," he said.
The Noisy Planet Web site encourages parents to seek "teachable moments," such as putting on ear protection before mowing the lawn, motor boating, hunting or attending a sports event.
Love said it's easy to find noise-protecting devices in sporting goods stores or sporting goods aisles of big stores like Wal-Mart or Target. There are even specialized noise protectors that can muffle loud blasts while allowing you to hear lower-decibel sounds quite clearly.
The "Noisy Planet" campaign also uses the acronym BAT to remind parents to protect their kids' hearing: Block the noise. Avoid the noise. Turn down the sound.
How can parents implement this advice? Battey suggests:
--Placing ear plugs or ear muffs where they might be needed;
--Placing red stickers on objects that can reach unsafe decibel levels;
--Taping a volume scale on the TV remote control to indicate safe and unsafe sound levels; and
--Setting the maximum volume on the child's MP3 player to a safe level.
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