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 Almost 49 million adults work in very noisy conditions, and more
than one-third of them never use hearing protection, the study
found. Among leisure pursuits, firearms pose a particular risk and
just 59 percent of the 35 million U.S. gun users represented in the
study wear hearing protection all the time.
"The problem here is both the number of people using firearms and
the potential noise-inducing hearing loss from the repeated
gunfire," said senior study author Dr. Neil Bhattacharyya of Harvard
Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
"A rifle has an extremely loud single burst of sound and if you are
firing hundreds of rounds, that can be very damaging, particularly
without hearing protection," Bhattacharyya said by email.
To assess how often U.S. adults are exposed to loud noise and how
regularly they take steps to protect against hearing loss,
researchers examined 2014 survey data representing 240 million
people.
Overall, 22 percent were exposed to “very loud” sounds at work
requiring them to shout to be heard at arm’s length. The exposures
were for at least four hours a day, several days a week.
Roughly one in five people were exposed to loud sounds outside of
work, and 62 percent of them didn't use hearing protection,
researchers report in The Laryngoscope.
With firearms, researchers found that one in five people who shot
more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition in the past year never used
hearing protection. Most of the firearm-related noise exposure came
during recreational shooting.
Lawn mowers were the most common source of non-occupational noise
exposure.
Almost two-thirds of people around loud noises during recreational
activities never used any hearing protection.
One limitation of the study is that it only included one year of
survey data, the authors note. It also didn't have medical records
to document specific hearing or health problems associated with
noise.
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"Untreated hearing loss is associated with increased stress,
depression and social withdrawal, and may exacerbate problems for
those with cognitive changes such as dementia," said Dr. Jennifer
Derebery of the House Ear Clinic and Institute and the University of
California Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine.
If people aren't sure whether the noise around them is loud enough
to damage their ears, they can get a sound meter app for their phone
and use ear plugs or other protection whenever the app shows the
sound is too loud, Derebery, who wasn't involved in the study, said
by email.
And there are good options for people to wear when they still need
to hear the sounds around them, a concern for many hunters and
concert goers.
"There are outstanding electronic ear muff and ear plug options that
solve many of the complaints that recreational shooters and hunters
have related to conventional hearing protection," said Colleen Le
Prell, an audiology researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas
who wasn't involved in the study.
"They allow quiet sounds, such as speech and sounds the hunter might
be making as they walk, to be not only delivered but amplified,
which can be very useful with someone who already has some hearing
loss," Le Prell said by email. "Hearing loss can be prevented, with
the consistent and correct use of hearing protection devices."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2oEsOlz Laryngoscope, online March 16, 2017.
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