Does it have to be very loud to be damaging?
No. A long exposure to less-intense noise, such as a job in a noisy restaurant, can be especially pernicious. Bryan Pollard, president of the non-profit Hyperacusis Research, says people report ear problems caused by all sorts of commonplace hazards, from lawnmowers to smoke alarms to power tools.
Once noise-caused sensitivity has set in, hyperacusis patients report crippling ear pain, sometimes from things as simple as a shopping trip filled with “noises they were not aware could be dangerous or surprise noise they did not anticipate”, Pollard said.
Even if people are aware that exposure to excessive noise can be bad, “I don’t think they have a sense of what it means should they acquire a hearing impairment,” said Gregory Flamme, an associate professor of audiology at Western Michigan University in the US.
“I don’t think they know how or when to protect themselves.”
People face more day-to-day noise than they realise, he said, from vacuum cleaners to blenders, hairdryers, movies and other things. Flamme uses noise dosimeters, which people wear to measure the total noise dosage during the day or other time period. One rousing basketball game could give a person what would normally be a month’s worth of exposure.
The ensuing damage depends in large part on individual susceptibility. In mouse studies, a gene governing susceptibility to noise-induced hearing loss has just been discovered, but it remains