If you have ever been at a concert and thought “This music is simply too loud,” it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve become too old for this sort of music. This reaction could be your body’s means of telling you that you are in danger of hearing impairment. If, after you’ve left the concert, and for the following few days you’ve had a ringing in your ears (tinnitus) or experienced difficulty hearing as well as usual, you may have experienced noise-induced hearing loss, or NIHL.

This can happen even after brief exposures to loud noises, and occurs because high decibel sounds can result in physical damage to the very small hair cells that receive auditory signals in the interior of the ear and transmit the signals to the brain, where they are interpreted as sounds. Typically, the NIHL resulting from a single exposure to very loud music or noise is short-lived, and will go away within a couple of days. However in the event that you continue to expose yourself to loud noise or music, it can cause tinnitus that doesn’t go away, or a long-term loss of hearing.

How much damage very loud music does to a person’s hearing is dependant upon a couple of things – how loud the music is, and how long you are exposed to it. Noise levels are measured on the decibel scale, which is logarithmic and therefore difficult for many people to understand; a rise of ten decibels on the scale means that the sound at the higher rating is two times as loud. Thus the noise of noisy city traffic (85 decibels) isn’t just a little bit louder than the sound of ordinary speech (65 decibels), it’s four times louder. A rock concert, at which the sound level is commonly in the range of 115 decibels, is 10 times louder than standard speech. In addition to precisely how loud the music is, the second factor that determines how much damage is done is how long you are exposed to it, the permissible exposure time. Hearing loss can occur from being exposed to sound at 85 decibels after only eight hours. In contrast, the permissible exposure time that you can be exposed to music at 115 decibels without risking hearing loss is less than one minute. Add to this the knowledge that the sound level at some concerts has been recorded at over 140 decibels, and you have a high risk predicament.

Projections from audiologists claim that by the year 2050 up to fifty million Americans will have sustained hearing loss resulting from exposure to very loud music. Bearing this in mind, many live concert promoters and concert venues have started supplying sound-baffling ear plugs to attendees for a minimal charge. One well known UK rock and roll band actually collaborated with an earplug manufacturer to offer them free of charge to people attending its concerts. Some concertgoers have reported seeing signs in the auditoriums that proclaim, “Earplugs are sexy.” Earplugs may, in fact, not be very sexy, but they could possibly save your hearing.

Any of our hearing specialists here would be pleased to supply you with information about earplugs. In case a noisy rock and roll concert is in your near future, we strongly suggest that you consider wearing a good pair.