Check yourself before you wreck yourself!

If you live in an urban area, then peace and quiet can come at a particularly high premium. If it isn’t the endless number of construction sites banging away at all hours, or the soundtrack of a stress-filled office, then it could be traffic on a busy road, noisy neighbours, and even jet engine noise underneath a flight path causing distraction.

However, a new study by the University of Michigan in the States shows that the greatest threat to peoples’ quality of hearing is none of these noisy urban nuisances; in fact the biggest contributor to modern loss happens right in your earlobe, courtesy of high powered modern MP3 and stereo music devices, such as iPods, mobile phones and portable stereos and music players.

In the study of 4500 New Yorkers, 90 percent of public transit users and 87 percent of non-transit users are exposed to damaging noise levels mainly from using their MP3 players or stereos. Habitually, they expose their sensitive inner ears to volumes of 80 decibels and upwards, or roughly the volume of an active vacuum cleaner right into their ear.

The obvious solution is, of course, to turn down the volume, but the research suggests this isn’t as obvious a solution as you might think. Many people are actually using the high volume music in their headphones or speakers to distract from other nuisance noise that might be bothering them in their environment, unwittingly compounding the threat to their hearing faculties.

Says Rick Neitzel, one of the researchers on the study:

“I do think it’s a serious problem, there aren’t really any other experiences where we would tolerate having nine out of 10 people exposed at a level we know is hazardous. We certainly wouldn’t tolerate this with another agent, such as something that caused cancer or chronic disease. Yet for some reason we do for noise.”

[Source: TIMES Live]