Risk of lifelong damage from loud music spurs call to warn young people

Peer-researched paper pushes leading consultant audiologist to seek Government-backed campaign to better inform young listeners

Hundreds of thousands of children and young people in Ireland are under threat of permanent hearing loss through listening to loud music on headphones and going to concerts, a study suggests.

The findings, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), have provoked calls from a leading consultant audiologist for a Government-backed campaign to warn younger people of the damage they risk.

The peer-researched paper, led by Dr Lauren Dillard of the Medical University of South Carolina, estimates from an analysis of 33 existing studies that 24 per cent of people worldwide aged between 12 and 34 listen to music on headphones at unsafe levels.

Some 48 per cent of the global population in this age group regularly expose themselves to potentially damaging sound levels at gigs, nightclubs, pubs and other entertainment venues. In Ireland there are about 1.4 million people aged between 12 and 34, according to the census from 2011.

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The study benchmarks unsafe listening levels against existing legal limits for noise exposure in the workplace. Typically, employees working in the likes of construction sites or factories can only be exposed to a maximum of 80 to 85 decibels (dB) for no more than eight hours a day, or 40 hours a week.

BMJ noise report graphic

Because of the way sound intensity works on hearing, there is an exponential drop in the length of time to which one should be exposed to sound as it gets louder. Based on legal working limits, the study says safe listening times drop to 2.5 hours at 92 dB. At 98 dB, the safe time exposure drops to 38 minutes. At 101 dB it is only 19 minutes.

Research suggests younger people listening to music on smartphones, MP3 players and the like often choose volumes as high as 105 dB.

Meanwhile, average sound levels at entertainment venues range from 104 to 112 dB.

Dr Sandra Cummings, a consultant audiologist at Dublin’s Beacon Hospital, said young people do not realise the damage they are doing to their hearing, and that noise-induced hearing loss is permanent.

“It is a huge, huge problem,” she said. “A lot of young people are listening to music at unsafe levels through their personal listening devices or going to concerts – I’ve never been to a rock concert that lasts just 19 minutes.

A rule of thumb is if you are standing one metre from someone and you can hear the music from their headphones or earbuds, then they are playing it too loud

“In the working environment it is controlled, but it is not controlled on a day-to-day level for young people. You hear it every day on the Luas, young people with their earphones cranked up to get a better sound.”

Dr Cummings says she is already seeing patients at her clinic as young as 16 years whose hearing has been damaged. She blames the proliferation of music streaming sites and smartphones for the widespread health damage being done.

“I don’t know what it will be like 15, 20, 30 years down the line. Young people are so much more exposed to loud music, compromising their wellbeing,” she said.

Dr Cummings said hearing loss can lead to workplace problems and even relationship issues, and has been shown to be a key aggravating factor in dementia, as people withdraw from conversations as the “cognitive strain to hear becomes too much”.

Hearing is also critical to speech recognition, while loss of hearing can bar younger people from certain jobs.

“A rule of thumb is if you are standing one metre from someone and you can hear the music from their headphones or earbuds, then they are playing it too loud,” she added.

Noise-cancelling headphones are also preferable, she said, because listeners without them often turn up their music to drown out the noise around them.

“Really what we need is a public awareness campaign targeting younger people, telling them the damage they are doing,” she added.

Dr Cummings said she would also like to see the tech companies “taking more of a role” in protecting people from hearing loss, while people regularly listening to loud music should have a proper diagnostic hearing test done every few years.

According to the BMJ study, recurrent or even single episodes of unsafe listening “may cause physiological damage to the auditory system, presenting as transient or permanent tinnitus”, as well as changes to hearing.

“Damage from unsafe listening can compound over the life course, and noise exposure earlier in life may make individuals more vulnerable to age-related hearing loss,” it states.

The economic cost globally of hearing loss is put at $1 trillion (€960 billion) a year. It is associated with poorer academic performance in children, as well as poorer wellbeing and lower income among adults.

The World Health Organisation estimates that more than 430 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss, and that this figure could double if preventive policies are not implemented.

Brian Hutton

Brian Hutton is a freelance journalist and Irish Times contributor