Hearing Damage

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• QHow can my occupation affect my hearing?

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  A Univ. of Nev. School of Medicine, Family Medicine answered

  Occupational hearing loss occurs as a result of workers' exposure to loud noise. Noise levels over 85 decibels can be hazardous to hearing. If you have to raise your voice to speak to someone an arm’s length away, the noise levels may be loud enough to damage your hearing.

  Your level of risk is influenced by several factors:

  • Noise level: as noise level increases, the risk also increases
  • Duration of exposure: the longer the noise lasts, the more hazardous it becomes
  • Impulsiveness: noises that have very abrupt starts and stops (such as hammering, gunfire or fireworks) are more dangerous than constant noise of the same overall level
  • Intermittency: periods of relative quiet between exposures allow the ear to "rest" and reduce the risk

  Ototoxic chemicals can also affect hearing. Workplace chemicals that pose a threat to hearing include:

  • Organic solvents such as toluene, styrene, xylene, ethylbenzene and trichloroethylene
  • Heavy metals such as mercury, lead and trimethyltin
  • Asphyxiants such as carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide
  • Endocrine disrupters such as Aroclor 1254 and Acrylonitrile

  All workers are not equally vulnerable to occupational hearing loss. Certain biological factors such as gender, age, race/ethnicity, genetics and health issues can influence a worker's susceptibility to the effects of noise.

  The ear does not experience pain in the same way the rest of the body does. If your ears feel stuffy or full, your ears are telling you that you have potentially harmed them. Ringing or roaring in your ears indicate a serious noise exposure, which if continued could lead to permanent damage and hearing loss.

• QWhat is noise-induced hearing loss?

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  A Sigma Nursing answered

  Noise-induced hearing loss is a preventable type of hearing loss. It occurs when either a sudden, loud noise or long-term exposure to noise damages the inner ear. The damage associated with noise-induced hearing loss is usually permanent.

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• QHow can I protect my ears from noise-induced hearing loss at work?

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  A Univ. of Nev. School of Medicine, Family Medicine answered

  The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommends preventing hazardous noise exposure through controls for noise exposure and encourages employers to create Buy Quiet programs as a first step. In these programs, companies are encouraged to purchase or rent quieter machinery and tools to reduce worker noise exposure.

  Although removal or control of hazardous noise from the workplace is the best solution, use hearing protectors in situations where dangerous noise exposures have not yet been eliminated. NIOSH has developed several tools that provide valuable information about hearing protection devices:

  • Hearing Protector Device Compendium is a comprehensive searchable database of hearing protection devices. This web tool was created to help workers and safety professionals select the most appropriate product for their unique environment. The tool identifies hearing protector devices by type, manufacturer and noise exposure level.
  • NIOSH HPD Well-Fit™ can quickly and inexpensively test the performance of hearing protection. This fit-testing technology is a significant advancement in efforts to preserve workers' hearing. HPD Well-Fit utilizes technology that is built into just about every computer sold today, requires only four to seven minutes to measure HPD performance and can be used with any earplug.

  In order to minimize occupational risks and reduce work-related hearing loss, companies and organizations should implement Hearing Loss Prevention programs. Critical components to any Hearing Loss Prevention Program include:

  • Noise exposure monitoring
  • Engineering and administrative controls
  • Audiometric evaluation
  • Hearing protection devices
  • Education and motivation
  • Record keeping
  • Program evaluation

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• QHow loud does a sound have to be to cause noise-induced hearing loss?

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  A Univ. of Nev. School of Medicine, Family Medicine answered

  Noise levels higher than 85 decibels can be hazardous to hearing and lead to noise-induced hearing loss.

  To get a rough estimate of noise levels, you can use a smartphone sound level meter app. To learn more about sound measurement apps, read the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Science Blog. If any of these quick screening methods indicate that noise levels may be hazardous in a workplace, companies should conduct a complete noise survey. 

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• QWhat are the risk conditions for hearing loss in children?

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  A Univ. of Nev. School of Medicine, Family Medicine answered

  Hearing loss can happen any time during life, from before birth to adulthood.

  The following are some of the things that can increase the chance that a child will have hearing loss:

  • There is a family history of childhood hearing loss, and 50 to 60 percent of hearing loss in babies is due to genetic causes. So some babies with hearing loss might have family members who also have a hearing loss. About 30 percent of babies with genetic hearing loss have a “syndrome.” This means they have other conditions in addition to the hearing loss, such as Down syndrome or Usher syndrome.
  • 25% or more of hearing loss in babies is due to maternal infections during pregnancy, complications after birth, and head trauma. For example, the child:
    • Was exposed to infection, such as cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, before birth
    • Spent 5 days or more in a hospital neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) or had complications while in the NICU
    • Needed a special procedure like a blood transfusion to treat bad jaundice
    • Has head, face or ears shaped or formed in a different way than usual
    • Has a condition like a neurological disorder that may be associated with hearing loss
    • Had an infection around the brain and spinal cord called meningitis
    • Received a bad injury to the head that required a hospital stay
       
• QDo hearing aids work for all hearing problems?

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  A Challenge America answered

  If you are diagnosed with hearing loss, a hearing aid might help you to be an active participant in life. Hearing aids can help those with mild to severe hearing loss. While a hearing aid cannot fill in the gap for the hearing loss, it can help magnify what you can hear and improve your quality of life.

  With a hearing aid, you are in control. You can change the volume and turn it off and on as you please. The style of today’s hearing aid blends in on most people, whether it is in the ear (ITE), in the canal (ITC), behind the ear (BTE) or part of your eyewear.

  The in-the-canal (ITC) hearing aid fits the size and shape of your ear, so it is virtually hidden. A modified version of this is a completely-in-canal (CIC) hearing aid. The in-the-ear (ITE) hearing aid fits directly into the outer ear. Typically, the behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aid is inside of a small curved case that fits behind your ear. Because BTE hearing aids are more powerful, they may be better for people with severe hearing loss.

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• QWhat are the disadvantages of hearing aids?

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  A UCLA Health answered

  Disadvantages of hearing aids include that they don't block out background noise, they don't separate speech and noise in noisy environments and they don't allow people to hear sounds at a distance.

  Hearing aids are necessary to address hearing loss, but they're insufficient. There are lots of other things that help with good communication and make communication successful. Hearing aids make things louder, and they make sounds sound sharper, especially high-frequency consonants, but hearing aids don't block out background noise. That's a very common misperception that may be fed by some of the advertising seen in the newspaper. Hearing aids don't have a brain. They don't know what people want to hear and what they don't want to hear, so they amplify all the sound that's in the environment. Hearing aids don't do a good job of separating speech and noise under noisy circumstances, and they don't do a good job of allowing people to hear sounds that are at a distance.

• QWhat should I expect from a new hearing aid?

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  A UCLA Health answered

  When you get a new hearing aid, initially you may feel that things sound very funny. But if you wear your hearing aids every day, for most of the time that you're awake or all the time that you're awake, your brain will very rapidly become accustomed to the sound that it's hearing. It begins to use that new information in a way to make sound and speech more easily heard and more easily understood. But it does take practice. You don't just put hearing aids on and away you go hearing well. You begin to retrain your ears, and more importantly, retrain your brain how to listen and how to interpret sounds that perhaps you haven't been hearing for many years.

  Hearing aids don't provide normal hearing, and if you have hidden hearing loss with no change on your hearing test or no abnormality on your audiogram, hearing aids may or may not be helpful. So that's definitely something to discuss with your audiologist. There may be other technologies that you can use that might be more helpful, for instance, a remote microphone to better pick up speech at a distance or in noise.

• QWhat sounds get harder to hear with age?

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  A UCLA Health answered

  Typically with age-related or noise-induced hearing loss, the damage occurs in the high frequency or high-pitched sounds, and those are the words that give meaning to the sentence or to what is being said. It's the high-frequency consonants that actually make the words mean something. So, if the phrase, "Please sit down on the chair," is said to someone who has a high-frequency hearing loss, they might hear something like, "Ease it own on uh air." It doesn't make any sense. That's because all the high-frequency consonants have been filtered out by the hearing loss. Hearing in the low pitches stays relatively good, so the vowel sounds in speech, A-E-I-O-U, are low-pitched and easy to understand and easy to hear.

• QWhat causes hearing loss?

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  A Sigma Nursing answered

  Genetics and damage from a variety of sources can cause hearing impairment. The children of a deaf parent can inherit deafness. Pregnancy and childbirth complications can cause hearing impairment, such as prematurity, oxygen deprivation, jaundice, infections. Chronic ear infections can damage the ear to the point of hearing loss. Infectious diseases like measles, mumps and meningitis can impair hearing, most often in children. Taking ototoxic drugs at any time can affect hearing ability. Sometimes hearing impairment is caused temporarily by blockage of the ear canal by wax or more permanently by the insertion of an object in the ear. Exposure to excessively loud noise (music, gunfire, explosions, machinery) can hurt the inner ear's ability to function. Age can also be a factor in hearing impairment after prolonged noise exposure over the years.

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