Photo credit: MITO SettembreMusica licensed under CC BY 2.0
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
The BBC reports that a viola player who suffered a life-changing hearing injury at a rehearsal of a Wagner opera is entitled for compensation for his injury.
This is the first time that acoustic shock has been recognized as a compensable work-related condition.
A one-time exposure to extremely loud noise–often caused by a blast injury but possible from other loud noise–physically disrupts the structures in the inner ear. In many if not most cases, they can’t recover from the trauma.
Even if the noise isn’t 130 decibels, it can still cause lifelong hearing loss, tinnitus, or hyperacusis.
I have been unable to find more than anecdotal reports in the medical literature of this type of auditory damage, and in science the operative phrase is “the plural of anecdotes isn’t data,” but we all need to be aware of the dangers of noise.
As violist Chris Goldscheider unfortunately learned, if it sounds too loud, it is too loud.
