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How many of these facts from the Hearing Health Foundation do you know?
Fact No. 1: Noise-induced hearing loss is acquired from excessive noise.
• About 30 million U.S. workers are exposed to hazardous noise levels on the job.
• Nearly 1 in 5 American teenagers is expected to acquire hearing loss largely due to overexposure to loud sounds.
• 25 percent of Americans age 65-74 and nearly 50 percent of those 75+ have disabling hearing loss.
• Approximately two-thirds of service members and veterans have NIHL or tinnitus, or both.
• Many veterans also have processing disorders as a result of blast or high-noise exposure.
Fact No. 2: NIHL is preventable. The measures needed to prevent NIHL are simple: walk, block, and turn.
“Walk away from the sound source, block your ears using earplugs, and turn down the volume,” advises Nadine Dehgan, HHF’s CEO.
Fact No. 3: Musicians are 57 percent more likely to experience tinnitus and are almost four times more likely to develop NIHL than the general public.
Sound onstage can reach up to 110 decibels, the equivalent of a jackhammer. Prolonged exposure to loud noise causes hair cells of the inner ear to be damaged, leading to permanent hearing loss.
Fact No. 4: A portable listening device at maximum volume (105 dB) is louder than heavy city traffic, drills, and a noisy subway platform and equal to a table saw.
Blasting the volume in earbuds hurts hearing. It is estimated that 20 percent of teenagers, an age group that frequently uses portable listening devices, will suffer from hearing loss from overexposure to noise.
Hearing Health Foundation is the largest nonprofit funder of hearing and balance research in the U.S. Learn more by visiting hhf.org or by contacting them at info@hhf.org or (212) 257-6140/(888) 435-6104 (TTY).