MUSIC TO YOUR EARS

Have you ever been to a party and your ears were blasting minutes after you have left the venue? Or have you ever experienced hearing significantly fewer hours or days after? I hate to break the obvious to you. It probably comes from the way too loud music, that caused your temporary noise-related hearing loss. But can noiserelated hearing loss even be temporary?

as sound.

During noise related trauma not only the hair cells but also the whole corti may be disrupted. If you assume that this only happens when firecrackers are exploding close to you or you standing right next to the speakers at a rock concert, you are absolutely correct, but acoustic trauma doesn’t start there. While firework shows may be at 140-160 dBA and concerts roughly at 94-110/120 dBA hearing loss can occur way way before that.

adds the human’s ear response to the intensity. dB and dBA sounds are relatively similar in measuring sounds in the human hearing range. Sounds that the human ear doesn’t respond to such as above and below the human hearing range can be measured in dB. The US Department of Health and Human Services visualises why measuring in dBA is necessary: “(…) a lower frequency sound that isn’t processed as effectively through the ear will have a lower output level. For instance, the lowest note on a tuba (16Hz) will have a much lower dBA reading than a dB reading.“. However, the by far most important thing to understand about those two scales is that they work logarithmically. This means that if you add 10 dBA to a sound of 80 dBA, the sound will become 10x more intense and twice as loud to our ears, it grows in a steep curve.

Our ear works in notso-mysterious ways, it consists roughly of the inner, middle and outer ear. Sounds enter through the outer ear and get to the eardrum which leads vibration to bones (malleus, incus, stapes) located in the middle ear. Those send vibrations to the fluids in the cochlea finally moving hair cells along the membrane. The movement opens the sensory cells on top of the hair cells which creates an electrical signal, that is being carried by the auditory nerves to the brain. The brain converts the signals and recognizes what we know

To understand what this means it is important to recognize the meaning of dBA and how it works. Many factors define your experience of sound, this may be endurance, intensity, volume, frequency or the surroundings you’re experiencing it in. There are two very important scales to measure sound which are called “dB” and “dBA”, translated to decibels and A-measured decibels. While dB is solely used to measure sound intensity, dBA also

To be able to put noise into relation, we must outline at what noise level things are happening; a normal conversation is held at 60 dBA, the maximum volume level for personal listening devices is between 105-110 dBA, standing beside or near sirens equals roughly 120 dBA. That’s quite a range – remember the curve is logarithmical - but what gives another insight into what sound does to you is when you put the exposure time into consideration; A rule of thumb is that you are likely to damage your hearing at 85 dBA when you’re exposed to it for minimum 8 hours, at 100 dBA for minimum 14 minutes and at 110 dBA for at least 2 minutes. Clubs and Bars in Macedonia play music at over 110 dBA. We measured the dBA levels in Kotur and Stanica with an app, both were above a 100 dBA at almost every given time during the evening. Considering your hearing can get damaged after roughly 14 minutes of exposure, this is shocking.