By Dr. Becca Rancourt
Waterville Audiology
Noise pollution is a feature of our increasingly crowded world, and many people have already experienced dangerous hearing conditions. How can you tell if your hearing has been affected?
Think about how your ears reacted when you have been in situations where there was a lot of noise. Did you experience ear pain, a feeling of having your ears plugged, needing to shout for others to hear you, or experience temporary buzzing or ringing in your ears? If so, chances are you have experienced hearing damage.
How does hearing damage happen? Inside of your inner ear, there a small hair cells that help conduct the noise that constitutes your hearing. Injury to these hair cells comes from exposure to loud noise that can be sudden or prolonged. This can result in temporary and permanent hearing loss. To prevent noise induced hearing loss, you should familiarize yourself with dangerous decibel levels.
Any sound that is over 85 decibels (dB) exceeds what is considered the “safe” range. Any sound louder than 85 dB has a higher chance of causing permanent damage to your ears.
Here are some examples of dB levels in our everyday world:
* Rainfall = 50 dB
* Average conversation between two people = 60 dB
* Vacuum cleaner = 70 dB
* Alarm clock = 80 dB
* Motorcycle = 90 dB
* Lawn mower = 90 dB
* The highest setting on your personal listening device can be between 105 and 120 decibels!
Hearing loss should be addressed before it spirals into other issues such as depression and brain atrophy. If you have experienced dangerous sound levels and want to find out if you have hearing damage, visit our audiologist at Waterville Audiology.
When you are ready, call Waterville Audiology at 207-872-0320 to find out if your hearing has been damaged due do noise exposure.
