Photo credit: www.localfitness.com.au licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
This could be my shortest blog post ever: In a word, “yes.”
Seriously, the only safe noise exposure level to prevent hearing loss is a time-weighted average of 70 decibels for the entire day. This is not new information. The 70 decibels safe noise level was calculated by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1974. The World Health Organization reached the same conclusion in 1999, as did the National Institutes of Health in 1990. (The NIH states that the safe noise exposure level to prevent hearing loss is 75 decibels average for 8 hours, which is the same mathematically as 70 decibels for the day.) And more recently, my analysis of the safe noise level passed editorial muster at two of the worlds leading medical journals, the American Journal of Public Health in 2017 and the New England Journal of Medicine in 2018.
There can be no rational doubt about this number.
Most people think that louder music improves athletic performance, but there is no scientific evidence for this. I have communicated with two of the world’s experts on the effects of music on athletic performance. who both informed me that music may help improve performance in rhythmic activities, e.g., running at a steady pace, but there is no research showing that louder is better.
Those who go to noisy gyms and noisy spin classes have a choice: wear earplugs now, or wear hearing aids later.
Remember: If it sounds too loud, it IS too loud.
