Photo credit: Andrea Piacquadio
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
There is a lot of bad hearing health advice in the media and online. In blog posts, I have chided those citing the industrial-strength National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health 85 A-weighted* decibels (dBA) occupational noise exposure limit as safe for the public, with or without A-weighting. I have previously written about the only evidence-based safe noise level for the public, and about what the actual safe noise level might be.
Finally, though, there is sound advice in the media about protecting your ears in a recent HuffPost article. Reporter Caroline Bologna wrote about the “7 Things Ear Doctors Never, Ever Do.” The first thing she lists is that they never leave the house without earplugs. That’s what I do. If I’m going out to dinner, to a movie or a sports event, I always make sure I have earplugs in my pocket, and I always have earplugs in my car. My wife carries two pair in her purse, in case I forget mine.
To me, that’s the most important piece of advice Bologna gives. If it sounds loud, it’s too loud and your auditory health is at risk. Turn down the volume, which is often impossible in a restaurant, movie theater or sports venue. Leave the noisy environment, which would mean missing out on the experience. Or insert your ear plugs, which should always be in your pocket or purse.
As a credit card advertisement used to say, “Don’t leave home without them!”
*A-weighting adjusts sound measurements to approximate the frequencies of human speech. A-weighting is used in occupational safety and health regulations and litigation because the compensable workplace injury is the loss of the ability to understand speech. There is no conversion factor from dBA to unweighted decibel (dB) measurements, but my experience is that except for machinery noise, dBA measurements are about 5-7 dB less than dB measurements.
