hearing health
life
hearing health foundation
in
spired
A Wakeup Call
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A band class hearing injury inspires a student advocate to lead classes on protecting hearing. By Ben Manley Whether or not you’re knowledgeable about noise-induced hearing loss, you’d probably try to avoid things like having a trumpet blasted point-blank into your ear. But that was me, 10 years ago, in a 7th grade band class, crying from the pain in my ear and leaving school early so my mom could whisk me straight to an audiologist. I sat through all the tests—raising and lowering my hand for beeps of various frequencies—and the audiologist delivered the diagnosis: While I may not notice anything for years (perhaps even decades), the damage I’d incurred would most likely result in significant hearing loss as I got older. A decade later, I am fortunate to say I don’t have a noticeable, daily symptom like tinnitus (ringing in the ears). However, I do have more sensitive ears (a mild form of hyperacusis) and need phrases from conversations repeated more often than others around me do—all because of a split-second mistake made by a middle schooler 10 years ago. At the time, my family and I had never really considered the dangers of noise exposure, but this experience was a wakeup call for all of us. After looking into noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) and related topics, we were surprised to discover how little we and our friends knew about it. We learned that even seemingly innocuous things like listening to loud music over time could cause the exact same long-term hearing loss as that one-time trumpet blast. Though I had no control over what had happened in band class that day, I realized that people everywhere were inadvertently giving themselves the same lifelong consequences through their own uninformed actions. A middle school student at the time of the band class incident, I thought it would be interesting to find an extracurricular activity that somehow related to my experience. Turns out, luck was on my side. When my family and I researched organizations related to NIHL, we discovered an educational nonprofit based just minutes from our house: Ear Peace Save Your Hearing Foundation, also known by its shorter name Ear Peace Foundation. Founded by Adele Sandberg and directed by Sherilyn M. Adler, Ph.D., Ear Peace Foundation educates young people about the dangers of NIHL and how to take preventive measures to protect their hearing. If their classroom lesson had been taught to my middle school peers, it might have completely prevented the trumpet blast that left me with permanent damage! I was invited to become Ear Peace Foundation’s first student ambassador to help spread the word about the NIHL epidemic and its simple prevention. Throughout middle school and high school, I presented directly to hundreds of students in classrooms around South Florida, a few classes in Illinois, and a summer program at the Juilliard School in New York City. The fact that I was a fellow student with a casual style differentiated my presentation from the everyday lessons taught by “the adults” and created an immediate connection with the other kids. The Ear Peace Foundation classroom lesson is interactive, combining information
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