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Sound Exposure and Potential Hearing Loss



Recently, there was a post on the ICSOM board that I thought I would share the info from. ICSOM is the International Congress of Symphony and Opera Musicians, which consists of the musicians of the major US and some international orchestras.

The topic was How long can a person endure a certain noise level before hearing impairment occurs. As you can imagine, this is a fairly hot topic among symphonic musicians the world over, as it has been proven that we will lose at least 20% of our hearing over the course of our careers. I think audiophiles will also be very interested in the following stats, especially those of you who like to listen very loudly for long periods.

What follows are the current standards for recommended permissible exposure duration for continuous time weighted average noise, according to NIOSH and CDC. Keep in mind this is an average level for continuous exposure, and these numbers may not represent a world wide view of the subject. Basically, for every 3dB beyond 82dB, the permissible exposure time is cut in half before hearing damage will occur.

82dB - 16 hours
85dB - 8 hours
88dB - 4 hours
91dB - 2 hours
94dB - 1 hour
97dB - 30 minutes
100dB - 15 minutes
103dB - 7.5 minutes
106dB - less than 4 minutes
109dB - less than 2 minutes
112dB - less than 1 minute
115dB - less than 30 seconds
learsfool

Showing 1 response by wehamilton

wehamilton
65 posts
 
As someone who has had tinnitus since attending a 1982 Bruce Springsteen concert (10th row center), I totally agree with Nonoise's comments. Our hearing is actually quite delicate. If these fools that are vibrating the windows of their Escalade or Civic knew what it would be like to have a lifetime of noise in their ears that's louder than the football game on TV, or louder than the music coming out of your stereo, they might change their ways. But probably not.

There are a lot of activities, in addition to concerts, that can do permanent damage to your hearing. I ride motorcycles, and one of the mags published an article a while back about the permanent damage to the auditory nerve that can take place from wind noise at highway speed. The information presented by Learsfool makes it pretty easy to see why it doesn't take that long to for the damage to be irreversible. I always wear ear plugs under my helmet, but still think I'm getting too much exposure to wind noise. Same when I go shooting- ear plugs AND 30 db hearing protectors over them.

The time to save your hearing is before you've done any damage, because as several doctors have told me, there's almost nothing they can do for you once you've got tinnitus. Thanks for posting this information.
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