By Nelly Sander, AAU Communikation and Public Affairs
Photo: ColourboX

Professor in acoustics and hearing Dorte Hammershøi warns that today's digital sound culture leaves an entire generation at risk of permanent hearing damage.

“As we age, we will all develop hearing problems that require treatment. It's unfortunate, but inevitable. However, with unsafe listening habits, hearing problems start earlier in life and will be more difficult to treat. This can cause difficulties in working life, earlier need for hearing aids, social isolation, tinnitus and even increase the risk of dementia," explains Dorte Hammershøi.

There are no hearing tests yet that can show what’s brewing and help us navigate. According to the scientist, we therefore need to find our own Achilles heel and practice good habits that can make our own and our children's listening habits safer. 

Here are 15 important tips from the researcher - for yourself and to share with children and young people:

1. Take breaks. Hearing can recover from high levels of exposure with appropriate durations of silence.
2. Consider level. Play your favourite track at high level, but don't become a sound alcoholic. They don't all have to be at maximum level.
3. Check your phone's dose display if it has one. If it has registered what you’ve listened to and for how long over the last 24 hours, week or month, make sure it’s below 75 dB. This is the average that corresponds to the WHO's instructions for safe doses.
4. Consider other risk factors. The phone's display will typically not include the dose that you get from a concert or at a noisy workplace, for example. It typically only displays what it’s putting out itself. So, if you are exposed in other ways, the 75 dB average displayed on the phone will not be safe.
5. Plan. If you're going to a concert or festival, limit your noise exposure before and afterwards. A festival has a tremendous impact.
6. Avoid noise on the tent site. If you are at a festival then your hearing needs silence when you’re not at a concert. Use effective close-fitting earplugs when you sleep, even if you can sleep fine without them. Your hearing is also damaged by what you are not aware of when you are asleep.
7. Take a total time-out if you get tinnitus, a headache or experience impaired hearing ability. The latter can make you feel like turning up the volume because your hearing is temporarily impaired. Don't do this. You need to turn it down or turn it off.
8. Use music earplugs for live events. It makes the sound worse, but the levels are so high that just one concert can damage your hearing. There are earplugs for this purpose that are better than the cheapest foam ones.
9. Take it seriously. We have an overcapacity of nerve cells in our young years, which means that our hearing does not change noticeably, even if we lose nerve cells in the ear. Even a standardized hearing test cannot detect the damage when it happens. But the damage is there and cannot be fixed, even if the problems creep in more slowly.
10. Don't rely on your body's warnings. Some people get tinnitus, but far from all. You also get hearing damage even if you don't notice anything.
11. Use headphones that attenuate noise. Whether you use earbuds or headphones, they should block out the noise so you don't have to turn up the volume to drown it out. If they have active noise cancellation, use it.
12. Put on the headphones properly. If your earbuds fit poorly and don't fit snugly, the bass will leak[DH2] . Without bass, the music doesn't sound like much, so you turn it up. It is the remaining frequencies that are most dangerous to hearing – not the bass.
13. Help your children. Their earplugs must not dangle, but must fit the ear and be properly put on or inserted. Teach them to use the volume control and let them control it themselves. Ask if they think it's too loud or too soft. It's more important that they develop awareness of how high and low level sound sounds than whether they're using the volume you think is safe. Suggest that they do not turn up the volume higher than necessary to hear the sound. Have them practice it.
14. Protect both eyes AND ears from New Year's fireworks. If you stand close and turn your ear unluckily towards the explosion, you can damage both the inner ear and rupture the eardrum.
15. Use special hearing protection and possibly a silencer for hunting. Be aware of shooting ranges and other situations where someone is shooting close by. You can get hearing damage from a single shot. 

Translated by LeeAnn Iovanni, AAU Communication and Public Affairs
 

Contact

• Dorte Hammershøi, Professor and Head of Acoustics and Hearing, Section for AI and Sound, Department of Electronic Systems, AAU, Tel.: +45 99 40 87 05, Email:  dh@es.aau.dk
• Nelly Sander, Projekt Manager AAU Communikation and Public Affairs, Tel.: + 45 99 40 20 18, Email: nsa@adm.aau.dk