Understanding Noise-Induced Hearing Loss

Did you know that early identification and intervention for hearing loss are important? Many people live with unidentified hearing loss, often failing to realize that they are missing certain sounds and words. Checking one’s hearing is the first step toward addressing the issue.

Hearing loss can result from damage to structures and/or nerve fibers in the inner ear that responds to sound. This type of hearing loss, termed “noise-induced hearing loss,” is usually caused by exposure to excessively loud sounds and cannot be medically or surgically corrected.

Noise-induced hearing loss is the most common type of hearing loss in the world. We can experience it by being exposed to loud sounds over a long period of time. Our ears are delicate, and we cannot tolerate too many loud noises at once. Deafness and hearing loss can both result from loud noises. Whether the noise is constant or intermittent, it causes damage over time. The longer you spend being exposed to noise, the greater your risk of hearing loss.

Noise-induced hearing loss is a common occupational disease that has reached epidemic proportions, especially in industrial environments. It is the leading cause of long-term disability in the United States today, with an estimated 2.1 million workers suffering the effects of NIHL every single day.

NIHL can be the result of working in construction/manufacturing zones with heavy types of equipment and machinery. Hearing loss due to noise exposure occurs in many occupational settings and has serious consequences including psychological distress and reduced quality of life

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The effect of noise on hearing depends on how loud it is (sound intensity) and how long it lasts (duration). Hearing loss can result over time from damage caused by repeated exposures to loud sounds. The louder the sound, the shorter the amount of time it takes for hearing loss to occur. The longer the exposure, the greater the risk for hearing loss (especially when hearing protection is not used or there is not enough time for the ears to rest between exposures).

How loud something sounds to you is not the same as the actual intensity of that sound. Sound intensity is the amount of sound energy in a confined space. It is measured in decibels (dB). The decibel scale is logarithmic, which means that loudness is not directly proportional to sound intensity. Instead, the intensity of a sound grows very fast. This means that a sound at 20 dB is 10 times more intense than a sound at 10 dB. Also, the intensity of a sound at 100 dB is one billion times more powerful compared to a sound at 10 dB.

Two sounds that have equal intensity are not necessarily equally loud. Loudness refers to how you perceive audible sounds. A sound that seems loud in a quiet room might not be noticeable when you are on a street corner with heavy traffic, even though the sound intensity is the same. In general, to measure loudness, a sound must be increased by 10 dB to be perceived as twice as loud. For example, ten violins would sound only twice as loud as one violin.

The risk of damaging your hearing from noise increases with the sound intensity, not the loudness of the sound. If you need to raise your voice to be heard at an arm’s length, the noise level in the environment is likely above 85 dB in sound intensity and could damage your hearing over time.

Sound is information. Noise-induced hearing loss affects people every day in every industry throughout their life. There is now a revolutionary new way to monitor sound levels in real-time and give you protection before your hearing gets damaged.

Soundtrace is the first and only product in the market that lets workers and employers track their NIHL while in the workplace. With a quick click at the end of their shift, they can see an overview of all the sounds they were exposed to and manage to identify engineering or admin controls to better protect them from noise-induced hearing loss. Contact our team to learn how Soundtrace can help your company implement a hearing conservation program to reduce the risk of noise-induced hearing loss.

Contact the Soundtrace team today!

‍