Your hearing is delicate, so take care to protect it

The human inner ear contains around 15,000 special hearing hair cells, which enable us to hear a vast range of sounds from the low buzzing of a bee, to the high pitch laughter of a young child. Although 15,000 seems a lot, these cells are precious because along with age-related wear and tear – which means our hearing starts to deteriorate when we are in our twenties – they are susceptible to damage from disease, certain medicines and loud noise and once damaged, are lost forever.

While we may not have control over the influence of age or illness on our hearing, we can take steps to protect our ears from exposure to loud noise: hearing damage due to noise exposure is preventable!

Because of the way we hear, a sound level may seem comfortable but is likely to be louder than we think. Also, most noise-induced damage occurs gradually – up to 30 per cent of our hair cells can be lost before there is a measurable hearing loss – so we may not realise we are damaging our ears and may not find out until many years later.

Exposure to sounds that are quieter than 80 decibels (dBA) are not considered harmful; for example, an average conversation is around 60dBA, but many sounds to which we are exposed go above this level.

Where people work in noisy environments, such as factories, call centres or nightclubs, there are Noise at Work regulations to protect people. These regulations include requirements for an employer to minimise noise levels and to make the wearing of ear plugs compulsory.

At home, however, using power tools – some can have noise levels above 90dBA – or out and about riding motorcycles, attending music concerts, nightclubs, cinemas etc, all of which can have sound levels of over 100dBA, it is up to us to take responsibility for our hearing. We should also be careful when listening to music in cars and using MP3 players, and even some toys for young children have the potential to cause damage.

As the risk to our hearing is due to both the loudness of the sound, as well as the amount of time we are exposed to it, here are our top 5 tips for protecting your ears:

• Reduce the amount of time you are exposed to loud noise
• Don’t stand too close to the noise source, stand away from speakers
• Wear appropriate earplugs when using power tools or attending music concerts or nightclubs
• Take regular breaks from loud noise, at least a ten minute break every hour
• After noise exposure, keep things quiet and allow your ears to recover

The possibility is that if we do not take care to protect our ears from loud noise, hearing loss which commonly becomes noticeable as people reach their sixties, is in future increasingly likely to affect people much earlier, in their fifties, forties and even thirties, and while hearing aids are beneficial to people with hearing loss, even with continuing technological developments, they cannot restore the hearing you have lost: they can only work with the remaining hearing you have got.