Very often events or incidents involving health and safety related issues capture headlines. The 13-story fall and subsequent death of four workers from a collapsed swing stage this past Christmas Eve, is but one example. However the reality is that most workplace injuries involve incidents that are far more prosaic in their nature. Many workplace conditions are allowed exist because the effects they elicit are so subtle that many workers go about their business blithely unaware of the danger at hand. Noise is precisely one of those hazards that fits this description. Sometimes the hazard is recognized in places other than the workplace. Places like the subway in Toronto.
Riding "the Rocket" to downtown the other day, I was sitting in a subway car some 9 feet (3 meters) from a young woman wearing an iPod. She was listening to rock music from her iPod; I know she was listening to rock because I could actually hear the music from where I was sitting. The young person in question, she was in her twenties I believe, will not recognize any hearing loss problems for many years. But gradually, bit by bit, if she continues to blast loud noise directly at her ears, her hearing will worsen. At first it will be the higher pitched sounds; then conversations will sound muffled and finally she will realize her hearing is compromised and will seek help. Unfortunately it will be too late.
The hair-like nerve endings that transmit sound to the brain are very much like grass in a field. You can walk on the grass, flattening it out, and it will spring back. However, like a well worn path that becomes bare with constant usage, if you continue to flatten the hearing nerve endings by pummeling them with loud noise continuously, eventually they lose the ability to "spring back". Nerve endings damaged in this way, that do not spring back represent hearing loss; loss that cannot be corrected, ever. Whether the damage is from loud noise at work or from iPod does not matter. In fact the noise does not even have to be that loud.
Hearing damage from really loud noise is probably obvious to most people. However we must also be aware that noise that is only moderately loud can be just as harmful, if the exposure is extended over a long period of time. This fact, while not as intuitively obvious, is every bit as important to understand. Especially if you are a worker subjected to elevated noise levels for many years.
We only get one chance at properly protecting our hearing; there are no "do-overs". If you work, or play, in a loud environment you owe it to yourself to consider the consequences and take active steps to mitigate the hazards.
