At HearAdvisor, now we’re also vetting concert earplugs:
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Would love if you could add vetting for the severe-profound sector sometime too, at this end of the market we need to have the best of the very best.
Aren’t some concerts louder than 120 dBA? It could be helpful to provide safe exposure time ratings at more than one sound level.
Why would you push ear plugs for the people who wear hearing aids??
Is it targeting the OTC crowd and those interested in preserving hearing? They already have the test equipment so why not rate an adjacent category of items.
Hearing loss does not make it safe to go to a loud concert without some level of protection. Are you saying the site should rate over the ear protection that can be used with hearing aids?
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Of course I do not suggest that people go to loud concerts without protection
but I do rather expect that a team member of Hearing Tracker would stay with Hearing problems. I think, because my hearing is so severely affected, I am being selfish. I apologize.
Yeah, it basically goes to zero minutes pretty quickly even with plugs… especially if you use the NIOSH standard, which we don’t…
People with hearing loss should absolutely be protecting their hearing in dangerously loud environments. But, to answer your question, the work is not specifically targeted towards people with hearing loss or hearing aids. We’re interested in overall hearing health, from preservation to treatment.
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My audiologist said I should wear earplugs when playing in the Brass Band and when at concerts to protect my remaining hearing.
It’s simple. Assuming no conductive hearing loss, only sensorineural:
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Very loud sound reaches the eardrum with excessive power.
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This causes overly energetic vibration of the ear ossicles, which is conducted to the oval window of the cochlea.
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This in turn causes excessive fluid movement in the cochlea with the same energy in people with normal hearing as well as in people with hearing loss.
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Excessive fluid movement may cause damage to delicate structures in the inner ear, which may lead to further deterioration of hearing.
I think (but only theorize) that people with hearing loss, who already have damaged cochlea structures, are more prone to further injury than people with normal hearing.
It’s because the excessive energy of fluid movement in the cochlea is what damages hearing, not our subjective feeling of sound power.
Quite as people with a crack in the bone are more likely to have it broken in the case of the next injury than people with healthy bones (please correct me if my supposition is wrong).
People with hearing loss have impaired stapedial reflex (and possibly also the function of the tensor tympani muscle). Normally that reflexes partially protect the cochlea from excessive vibration of the ear ossicles.
What I was getting at is, how can one wear an ear plug and put a HA over it?
Not necessarily earplugs; it may also be something similar to headphones. Some people have rather flat hearing loss on an audiogram, so when earplugs give, for example, 25 dB attenuation at every frequency and music is ~100 dB, roughly 75 dB reaches your eardrum.
Another option is a second, occluding set of earmolds with no vent and a properly fitted HA; possibly, compression may help.
Noise damage and hearing protection are very closely related to hearing problems. Why wouldn’t to want to know how to protect your hearing, what’s left of it? If I ever go to a loud concert again, I absolutely will think about ditching the hearing aids for ear plugs. In my as yet limited experience, hearing aids don’t do much good when it’s that loud anyway, and I have enough hearing left that I would still enjoy the music. I went clubbing a lot in my misspent youth, which may well have contributed to my hearing loss, and I certainly don’t want to lose more.
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I’m so with you on this.
Shooting (wildfowl) as a boy, clubbing, putting on concerts and eventually running a nightclub.
I’m surprised I still have the hearing I do have.