Are you at risk from noise damage?

You may be damaging your hearing if:

• you work in a noisy environment
• you spend a lot of time in noisy places such as nightclubs and concerts
• you have a noisy pastime such as playing in a rock band, shooting, or motorsport

The risk to your hearing is based on the loudness of the sound and the amount of time you spend exposed to that sound. The louder the sound, the less time you can spend in it. If you wear hearing protection you can increase the amount of time you can safely spend in it.

Early warning signs

Have you ever experienced the following?

• Ringing in your ears (tinnitus) after being exposed to loud noises?
• A 'dullness' of hearing after being exposed to loud noises?

These are tell-tale signs that some damage is being done to your inner ear. To begin with, your hearing may return to normal (unless it's an extremely loud sound - e.g. an explosion or the firing of a 12 bore shotgun). But if you keep exposing yourself to these levels of noise, then the damage becomes permanent... each further exposure has a cumulative effect.

The results of noise damage

People with a noise-induced hearing loss will find:

• Watching television and films at the cinema difficult
• Conversations in background noise (e.g. pubs, restaurants, in the street etc.) are extremely hard to follow.
• People seem to speak loud enough but mumble. Speech just doesn't have the same clarity as it used to (but they often mistake this for the way people talk 'nowadays').
• So it's better to prevent the damage happening in the first place, because the effects are permanent.

How to work out how much sound you can be exposed to

There are two factors involved in damaging your hearing by noise:

• How loud the sound is
• How long you spend in the noise

In the workplace there are laws to say how loud and how long is considered a safe listening time. These laws don't apply outside of the workplace (the feeling is that if you choose to damage your own hearing, then that's up to you). But it's sensible to follow the same guideline whether the law applies or not.