I have an iPod but I seldom use it. It is because most of the time, I am in front of my laptop and playing music through the media player. Recently, we've been reading accounts of audiologists issuing a warning we’ve been told years ago - if we listen too loud for too long, we'll lose our hearing. When the Sony Walkman made its debut in 1979, audio researchers said the same thing. When the portable CD player hit the market five years later in 1984, the warnings were issued again.
The difference? This time experts are pointing the finger to longer battery life and seemingly endless string of hits that can be played in our ears through the mp3’s, mp4’s and iPods without a break.
There are many portable digital audio and video players on the market but clearly the Apple iPod is the market leader with 42 million units sold, 14 million just in the last quarter of 2005.
Some iPods can play up to 20 hours straight before the battery needs recharging. Most units can hold tens of thousands of MP3 songs that can be programmed to play endlessly one after another without the user ever touching a button.
No more flipping tapes. No more changing CD's. There's nothing to interrupt the music to give our ears a break which, what doctors say, our ears need.
"If it's not given that time to rest, it can result in worse hearing loss than what have otherwise occurred," says Dr. Jay Rubinstein, Director of the Virginia Merrill Blodel Hearing Research Center at the University of Washington Medical Center.
Rubinstein is a national expert on hearing loss and iPod owner. He says iPods and other digital music players are too new to be included into any conclusive study on hearing loss tied to digital music players.
"There's no evidence at this point and we won't expect there to be because typically noise induced hearing loss is a long-duration process," says Rubinstein.
But rocker Pete Townsend of "The Who" recently wrote in his online diary about his hearing loss, claiming it's not the result of playing too loud at rock concerts, but years of playing his headphones too loud.
Headphones and earbuds don't come with warnings when the volume is at ear damaging levels. There is no requirement for manufacturers to install limiters that could restrict output to safe levels. And the government does not require manufacturers to provide information on the maximum output of digital music players.
So how do we know when the music pounding in our ears is at ear damaging levels? We really don't. Unfortunately, measuring the true output of earbuds in decibels can only be done in laboratory settings, and that's the problem for us, especially as this is costly and rarely available. We really don't know how loud the music is, in our ears.
If we take the presumption to add 6 decibels to our ambient reading, we could be listening at 98 decibels -- which is way above the 90-decibel level set by the ASHA and other experts as the minimum level where gradual hearing loss begins if exposed to the sound for hours at a time.
Regular exposure to 100 decibels for more than a minute can lead to permanent hearing loss.
The ASHA estimates MP3 players are capable of producing 110 decibels.
The best thing we can do is, not to crank up the volume, rather, reduce the background sound hitting our ears through noise isolating earbuds. We can also do the same with the use of noise canceling headphones (made by Sony, Panasonic etc.). They are expensive but doctors say they are worth it. Also, audiologists recommend the use of the older style, larger headphones that rest over the ear opening.
The predominant recommendation is what the researchers call the 60 percent/60 minute rule. They recommend using the MP3 devices, including iPods, no more than about an hour a day and at levels below 60 percent of maximum volume.
Remember, once our hearing starts to fade, it never comes back!
Reference:
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2005/12/garstecki.html Matt Markovich @http://www.komotv.com/stories/41766.htm
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