Children are especially vulnerable to hearing loss since they are more sensitive to loud sounds and damage can occur at lower levels in less amount of time writes Dr. Jacque Scholl, Tuned’s head of Pediatric Audiology

Babies and children are at greater risk for hearing damage than adults. There are many scientific explanations, but let’s just say that their smaller anatomical features and the law of acoustics can cause greater sound pressure in their ears causing damage faster than adults. But few caregivers take the necessary precautions for keeping little ears safe.

We live in a noisy world. In addition to added noise in the environment, several new generations of kids have grown up with electronics in hand and buds in their ears. Keeping kids safe from loud noise has become more difficult with the introduction of ear-level wear and exponentially more damaging.

How loud is too loud? Generally speaking, babies and young children should not be exposed to noise levels over 60 dB. The World Health Organization (WHO) lists everyday exposure ranges considered excessive for children. Attention to noisy toys should be an important part of toy selection.

But is hearing loss inevitable? The answer is “maybe.” Since everyone’s genetic makeup is different, so is our susceptibility and body response to noise exposure. Human ears weren’t made to handle excessively loud sounds. Hearing was essential for life and the ability to hear a tiny crack of a branch could be the difference between being the predator or the prey. The early world may have had noisy events such as a lightning strike, dinosaur roars, or volcano eruptions, but there was probably a lot of other damage with these events than just hearing loss.

Today, our world is much noisier. People are regularly exposed to loud sounds such as lawn movers, chainsaws, concerts, and a particularly savage one — the headphone. Tiny hair cells of the inner ear are not designed to handle loud sounds for extended periods and because these cells create a waste product (similar to your leg muscles building up lactic acid after a very long run), the longer you listen to loud noise the more difficult it is for the cells to clean out the waste. This information is significant because this tells us that not only does the loudness matter, but the duration.

“Noise exposure is a lot like sun exposure: Long enough, and bright enough, and you’ll burn” — Lauren Dragan, New York Times.

Children are especially vulnerable since they are more sensitive to loud sounds and damage can occur at lower levels in less amount of time. Hearing protection must be part of every new parent’s arsenal of safety equipment. Just like our kids will get sunburned even though we apply sunscreen all day, so will your child have damage to their ears. But the goal is to minimize the damage.

Stay Tuned to find out more!

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