Modern Vespa

I was thinking how a comment made by me liking a law that wants to put a curb on loud muffles can be political. That is like saying, I like the speed limit to remain 55 miles any hour. The rest of the group wants 65. I don't comprehend how this has anything to do with politics. Any way here is some latest news about hearing loss.

Study: 1 in 5 US teenagers has slight hearing loss
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Aug 17, 6:35 PM (ET)

By CARLA K. JOHNSON

CHICAGO (AP) - A stunning one in five teens has lost a little bit of hearing, and the problem has increased substantially in recent years, a new national study has found.

Some experts are urging teenagers to turn down the volume on their digital music players, suggesting loud music through earbuds may be to blame - although hard evidence is lacking. They warn that slight hearing loss can cause problems in school and set the stage for hearing aids in later life.

"Our hope is we can encourage people to be careful," said the study's senior author, Dr. Gary Curhan of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

The researchers analyzed data on 12- to 19-year-olds from a nationwide health survey. They compared hearing loss in nearly 3,000 kids tested from 1988-94 to nearly 1,800 kids tested over 2005-06.

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The prevalence of hearing loss increased from about 15 percent to 19.5 percent.

Most of the hearing loss was "slight," defined as inability to hear at 16 to 24 decibels - or sounds such as a whisper or rustling leaves. A teenager with slight hearing loss might not be able to hear water dripping or his mother whispering "good night."

Extrapolating to the nation's teens, that would mean about 6.5 million with at least slight hearing loss.

Those with slight hearing loss "will hear all of the vowel sounds clearly, but might miss some of the consonant sounds" such as t, k and s, Curhan said.

"Although speech will be detectable, it might not be fully intelligible," he said.

While the researchers didn't single out iPods or any other device for blame, they found a significant increase in high-frequency hearing loss, which they said may indicate that noise caused the problems. And they cited a 2010 Australian study that linked use of personal listening devices with a 70 percent increased risk of hearing loss in children.

"I think the evidence is out there that prolonged exposure to loud noise is likely to be harmful to hearing, but that doesn't mean kids can't listen to MP3 players," Curhan said.

The study is based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted by a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings appear in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Loud music isn't new, of course. Each new generation of teenagers has found a new technology to blast music - from the bulky headphones of the 1960s to the handheld Sony Walkmans of the 1980s.

Today's young people are listening longer, more than twice as long as previous generations, said Brian Fligor, an audiologist at Children's Hospital Boston. The older technologies had limited battery life and limited music storage, he said.

Apple iPod users can set their own volume limits. Parents can use the feature to set a maximum volume on their child's iPod and lock it with a code.

One of Fligor's patients, 17-year-old Matthew Brady of Foxborough, Mass., recently was diagnosed with mild hearing loss. He has trouble hearing his friends in the school cafeteria. He ends up faking comprehension.

"I laugh when they laugh," he said.

Fligor believes Brady's muffled hearing was caused by listening to an iPod turned up too loud and for too long. After his mother had a heart attack, Brady's pediatrician had advised him to exercise for his own health. So he cranked up the volume on his favorites - John Mellencamp, Daughtry, Bon Jovi and U2 - while walking on a treadmill at least four days a week for 30-minute stretches.

One day last summer, he got off the treadmill and found he couldn't hear anything with his left ear. His hearing gradually returned, but was never the same.

Some young people turn their digital players up to levels that would exceed federal workplace exposure limits, said Fligor. In Fligor's own study of about 200 New York college students, more than half listened to music at 85 decibels or louder. That's about as loud as a hair dryer or a vacuum cleaner.

Habitual listening at those levels can turn microscopic hair cells in the inner ear into scar tissue, Fligor said. Some people may be more predisposed to damage than others; Fligor believes Brady is one of them.

These days, Brady still listens to his digital player, but at lower volumes.

"Do not blare your iPod," he said. "It's only going to hurt your hearing. I learned this the hard way."

Hardly new news - but I guess some folks can't hear the message...

What?

Jimc that is for sure some people do not hear the message,

I am trying to help people that do not under stand how loud noise can damage there hearing and others around them. Give some good information about the subject. Then maybe they will under stand what it is all about.

tdi

When you're 16, you're bulletproof.
I thought it was a good idea to smoke back then . . . of course that isn't a very smart thing to do either.

Relating to this topic. I ALWAYS wear ear plugs when I ride. Today I was out on a long ride and stopped for an iced tea and wanted to drink it at the lake across the street from where I bought it. I didn't put my ear plugs in -just plopped my helmet on and cruised literally across the street and discovered that my Reflex has audible turn signal indicators! Ear plugs really do their job. EVERY rider I know that does not (or did not) wear them now wears hearing aids - every one. Protect your hearing, it doesn't come back.

Bob

Biology....rock & roll....shooting sports....they have made a mess of my hearing.

Earplugs are my friend on the bike.

The upside is I have an excuse for ignoring gibberish....

WIN!

R

8)

I could buy another scooter for less than the cost of my digital hearing aids! Protect those ears. (secretly it is nice to shut it all off once in a while!.....don't tell the Mrs!)

Maybe that is why teenagers (Young Persons) never respond when I speak to them.

Me: "Hello. Nice day, isn't it"?
YP: " ".

Me: "Are you going to the concert tonight"?
YP: " ".

Me: "Great talking to ya. Goodbye".
YP: " ".

Or is it because I am three times their age?

Yup, I sure was. I thought nothing of blasting music with headphones on, standing next to banks of speakers at concerts, etc. When I was listening to Led Zeppelin at full volume my father used to yell at me to "turn it down to a roar." Now I have no doubt that if I were to get my hearing tested, I'd either have a hearing aid or be pretty close to it.

We can tell kids all we want that their behavior has possible negative consequences but it's probably a rather small minority that will change what they're doing.

I don't wear earplugs, but I do wear a FF helmet on my 1998 et4 125cc. I find it a pleasantly quiet environment, but then I rarely exceed 35mph. I don't feel the need for earplugs, where's this damaging noise supposed to be coming from? The engine is fairly quiet with a stock exhaust and there's not a great deal of wind noise in city scooting.

p.s. the simpsons joke was exquisite.

Yeah, I would love to be able to go back to the low price of digital hearing aids. My unilateral cochlear implant (one ear only) cost a bunch for the pre-surgical testing (I had some problems that were located on the standard testing that required additional MRIs), I had to have 2 surgeries to prepare for the implant surgery (I needed to have a sinus surgery and an additional ear surgery to resolve problems related to the frequent infections), then the surgery for the implantation itself was pricey. Altogether, it was well over a quarter of a million dollars.

I have annual costs for parts that need to be replaced, those run me about $750, batteries cost me another few hundred (and these are not covered by insurance).

And, anyone that thinks that getting their hearing loss "fixed" by a hearing aid or an implant, no, it is no-where near the same.

When I was loosing my hearing and using hearing aids, it progressively got worse and worse.
First, my friends and family complained that I turned the radio or TV up too loud and I complained that they mumble.
Later, I lost the ability to understand people when they were not facing me.
Forget about talking to me on the phone!
Understanding what people are saying when there is any background noise is hopeless for me, so forget about restaurants, parties, etc.
Music is just noise because the very narrow range of sounds that I am able to hear is so limited that I miss the highs and lows that make music a full and enjoyable sound.
People all sound the same to me, with the cochlear implant, everyone sounds like Donald Duck-my children, my family, my co-workers...
I also have no ability to locate where a sound is coming from, for me this means that if I am able to hear that an alarm or buzzer is coming from, I have no way of locating what is buzzing purely by the sound of it, I regularly live with alarms going off in my house waiting until my son comes home so he can locate where the alarm is at (under a chair or bed or something that I did not know has an alarm in it is making a noise).

I am now totally deaf, I use a cochlear implant to give more sound awareness and it has been 6 years since I got my implant, I am still working on learning to use it, therapy to learn to use a CI is not easy, fun, or something that happens quickly. I also use sign language and am an active part of the Deaf community, I consider myself to be functionally hard of hearing.

It is a personal decision to protect your hearing or not, just as it is a personal decision to wear a helmet, use sunscreen, go get screened for medical issues, etc. Hearing loss is something that DOES happen to all of us as a natural part of the aging process, but you have an ability to prevent a lot of the reasons for mid range (which is the most important for most of us) hearing loss. http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/disorders/noise.htm

I accept my life, but it was a very long process to get where I am and accept that I will never hear normally again and live with what I have.

-v

try wearing ear plugs for a week then go with out and you tell me if there is any noise difference.

Thanks Vic, for the compelling story!

+1 Moi aussi!

People don't realise what they have until it is gone... unfortunately. If one person thinks again about turning down the volume on their ear buds and wears some hearing protection from reading my story, I am a happy lady.

I must be some kind of superhuman:

I was in the Army for 5 years as Infantry, so I shot a lot of loud bang bang things and flew in a lot of uninsulated aircraft and fell out of them

I've raced motorcycles for 20+ years.

I worked in a loud rock club for 5 years and never wore protection...

I'm in my mid-thirties and I can still hear that annoying anti-parent and anti-teacher buzzing sound thing that teens have on their phones.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5434687

But I have started wearing earplugs on long rides, esp on the loud RD. If you aren't superhuman I suggest you do the same.

I'm sure there is a difference. I just don't think that scooting about London on a stock et4 in a full face helmet is going to damage my hearing.

I do wear ear protectors when I'm using an angle grinder or drilling into metal, so I'm not reckless about these things.

tdilover I really wish you would have posted this 30 years ago.

Frivolous aside from Raputtak:

Thank you for posting your story.

Feel free to do what you want, but I felt exactly the same way four months ago. I commute in the city, rarely go high speeds, have a large windscreen and everything I have is stock. It's not just wind noise or the noise of your scooter--it's all of the ambient noise from the traffic that you are not aware of.

I urge you to read the Earplugs! thread for additional input on the subject.

People who ride bikes like to say "it's not a matter of if, but when you crash," which I think is complete BS, but i am a believer of "it's not a matter of if you lose some of your hearing, but when if you don't wear earplugs while riding."

At the very least, you should consider a set of ER-20's which reduce the more harmful noises but do not give you the "bucket over your head" feeling.

I have noticed that as one gets older, one's hearing worsens. Also, as one gets older, other people say less interesting things. It all works out in the end.

I hope this thread inspires me to go buy a pair. I play in a band and never wear ear plugs. My keyboard player (40 years old) always does - he teaches music composition and theory and his hearing is vital to him. My guitarist (27 years old) never does. I have noticed that he is constantly turning up his -amp. Can't tell him sh-tuff though.

I am thankful for this info and the previous info about ear plugs on this site. I wear ear plugs at the track or when I am driving my car on the track. But somehow I didn't think of wearing them while riding my scooter. I now wear them for rides over 15 minutes. My commute to work and the gym is only 3 miles, and I only do it a couple of times a week. So I still don't wear them then. However, when I am joy riding or running longer errands, I wear them. They make a huge difference and actual reduce the stress of traffic. I find I can actually hear cars better, because all of the other background noise, particularly wind, is muffled. I also wear an FF helmet.

I am lucky and have excellent hearing, especially since I leaned up against a concert speaker at a concert as a teen. My ears rang for about a week. Despite this, there is no reason to tempt fate.

I love hearing the real world experiences. It really drives the point home for me. Thanks for sharing.

So I am somewhere around needing people to face me when speaking to them....suks.

Background noise is a killer. I am dysfunctional in a night club setting....suks.

Jealously guarding what I have left....earplugs every time....

R

8)

I ride an ET4 and have a FF helmet, and sometimes the noise on the road is so loud that it's painful. It's not noise from the ET4 that's the problem: it's noise from other traffic. I wear earplugs for any ride over 15 minutes and for many rides that are shorter than that. My hearing is good but not perfect, and I don't want it to get worse.

I'd like to get noise cancelling earbuds. Can anybody recommend some good brands? I've tried googling them but got links to a lot of dubious websites, some of which tried to install viruses on my computer.

Came across a factoid sometime that not wearing earplugs for one ride in ten undoes the good done wearing them the other 9 times...

I have a vague memory that the energy intensity of a sound is proportional to the square of the amplitude. So a little reduction in the amplitude of the sound wave makes a big difference to the energy it carries.

And eating the crusts makes your hair go curly.

Geeza

YMMV, but you want to look for in-ear canal phones/monitors or IEP's/IEM's rather than noise canceling ones. A good seal on your canal eliminates the need for NC technology.

Better brands with a wide range of prices for these types of ear buds are Shure, Ultimate Ears, Etymotic Research, Sennheiser, etc.

It all depends on how much you want to spend.

Most of the usual suspects (Bose, Sony, JBL, Kliptch, etc.) make a product of this type as well, usually in the $25-$100 range.

In my experience, the "triple christmas tree" type seals do the best noise blocking.