G.I.V.E. for Kids: Healthy Mind, Healthy Body

Enjoy, Protect the Best Ears of Your Life

by Rebecca D. Williams, Parents' Source, March 20, 2004

One of the joys of parenthood is calming your newborn with a gentle lullaby. But as children grow, they are often exposed to much less soothing sounds. In fact, the daily noise of modern living can damage their ears.

About 1.3 million American youth 18 or younger have hearing loss, according to a 1990 survey by the National Center for Health Statistics. The cause? For many, it's today's high-volume life-style. The National Institutes of Health report that one-third of all hearing loss cases stem at least in part from common loud noises: power lawn mowers, jet engines, city traffic, loud appliances, rock music, stereo headsets. Some 59 million Americans are exposed to urban traffic noise, 16 million to aircraft noise, and 3.1 million to highway noise, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

How does cranking the volume damage your hearing? Loud noises destroy the tiny hair cells in the inner ear that signal the auditory nerve to send sound messages to the brain. Once those cells die, they never grow back. The result is a kind of deafness called "sensorineural hearing loss." This affects both volume and clarity, first at high pitches, then later at lower pitches where speech is heard. Noise may also cause "tinnitus," a ringing in the ears. Besides being a constant annoyance, tinnitus often signals impending hearing loss.

"One of the things that bothers me is that [young people] are aging their ears before their chronological time," says audiologist David Lipscomb, who has researched hearing loss in students at the University of Tennessee.In the fall of 1969, he tested the hearing of entering freshmen and found about 60 percent of them had hearing loss. Fourteen percent of the young men tested had hearing similar to the average 65 year old. By comparison, only 3.8 percent of sixth-graders had hearing loss, suggesting that something - probably noise - was damaging hearing during the teen years.

"We know that the average 70 year old will have some impairment from aging," says Lipscomb. "But for young people [exposed to loud noises], the aging process is speeded up. They're blowing their spare tires."

What should you do? Protect children's hearing when they are young, say experts. Avoid loud noises as much as possible.

How do you know if you're in danger? Lipscomb gives four clues:

• If your ears are ringing
• If things sound muffled, as if you're in a barrel
• If sounds are distorted, as if they're coming through a poor-quality speaker
• If you find yourself shouting to communicate.

The rule of thumb for listening to music is to keep it low enough so that you can hear other sounds above the tunes. If you're listening to a Walkman portable radio or similar headset, no one else should be able to hear your music.

Noise is measured in decibels. Anything 80 decibels or louder, such as a loud buzzer alarm clock, is potentially dangerous, according to American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). The higher the decibel, the louder the noise. The louder the noise, the shorter the time it takes to hurt your hearing.

When loud noise can't be avoided - such as when you're mowing the lawn, working in shop class, or attending a concert - guard your ears with hearing protection devices. Stuffing cotton in your ears will not do the trick. Good hearing protection is available with a number of devices, the most common and least expensive of which are earplugs.

Earplugs are available at most drug, hardware, music, and sporting goods stores, and custom-made plugs are available through an audiologist. Made of foam rubber or plastic, earplugs come with a noise reduction rating on the label established by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which regulates hearing safety in the workplace, recommends using earplugs with a rating twice as strong as you need to ensure protection. For instance, if you're going to be mowing the lawn (90 decibels), you'd need to reduce the noise by about 15 decibels to be in a safe range, so buy earplugs with a 30 decibel rating. For a rock concert (110 decibels), you'd need 45 decibel plugs. These are usually only available from an audiologist. If you can't get them, buy the strongest rating available in a drugstore (about 30 decibels).

Most people don't notice they've lost hearing until they develop tinnitus or they can't understand speech. But the damage begins long before that. An individual concert, lawn mower or power tool may not hurt your ears at the time, but added together over the years, they can be disastrous.

Have you ever walked away from a construction site or loud concert and everything sounds as if you're under water? Or you feel a fullness or buzzing in your ears? Although it goes away, you've damaged some hair cells in your inner ear. The cells will probably heal, but additional damage may permanently destroy them.

That doesn't have to happen. Parents can protect youngsters' ears and teach growing youth how to make sure they don't lose their hearing. After all, today's families have incorporated child safety seats, outlet plugs and bike helmets into their daily living. Taking steps to protect young ears is just one more thing you can do to care for your kids.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

• To learn more about noise-induced hearing loss, write to Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers (HEAR), a nonprofit organization, at P.O. Box 460847, San Francisco, Calif. 94146.
• To receive a free pair of 30 decibel earplugs, write to the "Hearing Is Priceless" Program of the House Ear Institute, 2100 West 3rd St., Fifth Floor, Los Angeles, Calif. 90057.

Rebecca D. Williams is a staff writer for FDA Consumer.

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