How to Prevent Hearing Loss

Hearing loss is more common than you may think. Between 50 to 60 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss, making it one of the top five most common pathologies in our country— twice as common as diabetes or cancer. While there are some risk factors for hearing loss that cannot be prevented, such as age and genetics, noise induced hearing loss, one of the main causes of hearing loss, is 100 percent preventable.

“Only you can control your personal exposure to recreational noise,” said Luke Hinzmann, lead Audiologist at San Juan Regional Medical Center Audiology. “It is completely preventable, yet it is one of the primary causes of hearing loss. It is up to each of us to protect our ears.”

While you are three times more likely to experience noise induced hearing loss if you have worked in a loud environment for at least five years, we are all at risk for this type of hearing loss. Exposure to loud noises adds up over time, causing permanent damage. 

How loud is too loud?

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) has standards of how much noise is a permissible exposure limit. Anything above 85 dBA (decibels average) for eight hours is likely to cause damage. For every 5 decibels over that, the exposure limit is cut in half. So, at 90 dBA, it only takes four hours of exposure to cause damage. 

These loud noises often cause incremental damage and result in high frequency hearing loss, or a loss of clarity when hearing speech or music.

“It doesn’t prevent you from hearing completely but hearing all the sounds clearly,” Hinzmann explained. “As time goes on it spreads into lower frequencies which is when basic communication becomes affected.”

If noise is loud enough, it can be a very short time frame when damage occurs, causing permanent hearing damage. 

“I have had many patients that had a single incident that affected their ears. Most of the time the single event was a firearm going off. This is completely preventable.”

Protecting your ears

So how can you protect your ears and prevent hearing loss? The easiest and most effective way is to wear some type of hearing protection, usually ear plugs or earmuffs or a combination of both. Since we don’t have sound level meters to measure how loud a noise is, it’s best to use your common sense. Wear ear plugs or earmuffs if:

• You think it’s too loud
• If you are next to someone and must shout to be heard
• When you are around firearms being shot
• At loud concerts

“There are no excuses,” Hinzmann said. “It is on each of us to protect our ears. Make it a priority to protect your hearing.”

If you or someone you know is experiencing hearing loss, contact San Juan Regional Medical Center Audiology at 505.609.6079 or visit https://www.sanjuanregional.com/audiology.