Scientists say 1 in 10 iPod users could go deaf
If you spend more than an hour a day in deep intimacy with your iPod, your Zune, or some other MP3 machine, a group of important scientists would like you to turn it down and listen to them.
The EU's Scientific Committee on emerging health risks, which is normally concerned with noise in factories and the British Parliament, performed a study of MP3 usage.
The committee members' findings left them with a strange ringing feeling. They concluded that an hour's iPod usage a day for five years might make as many as 1 in 10 listeners deaf.
The problem, the committee believes, is that many people love to listen to their music too loud.
In Europe, MP3 players are limited to a mere 100 decibels. However, these European scientists concluded that anything above 89 decibels listened to with regularity has an effect that is louder than the limits imposed on factories.
Naturally, special-interest groups have already supported these findings. Britain's Royal National Institute for Deaf People already has a 'Don't Lose the Music' campaign to raise awareness of the need for lower decibels.
Those with a nonscientific bent might be be wondering whether this research was as comprehensive as it might have been. (After all, the European Union is a body that likes to control many things in its region--tomato size and cake displays, for example).
The iPod has been around since 2001. Presumably, therefore, there must be some people out there who have listened for an hour a day for five years. Would it be an idea to find them and ask them if they are deaf?
I ask only because when the Devil's racket, called rock music, came along, my ears were assaulted by older folk telling me that if I listened to Ozzie Osbourne, Deep Purple, Van Der Graaf Generator, The Jam, and Southside Johnny on a regular basis, I would lose my hearing. (I don't appear to have.)
What perplexed me was that these irritable, hairy-eared fogies who were nagging me to stop listening couldn't themselves hear very well. What had caused their deafness? It can't have been the Guns of Navarone in every case. And it can't have been Frank Sinatra, can it?
I do want to take this research seriously, however. Because, well, you never know.
Might I therefore ask readers to share whether they have noticed some alteration in their hearing since they have been a regular iPod or Zune ear stuffer? Are you turning increasingly deaf ears to the sounds that used to be a part of your everyday existence? Are you leaning forward a little more on dates, for reasons other than ones you recognize and respect? And are you using the phrases "excuse me?", "you what?" or "huh?" even more than usual?
We need to know whether this is more than just a theoretical issue. Still, there are always unintended pleasures that might come from overprotective regulation. Surely, you have often wanted to regulate that nodding youth next to you on a plane with his iPod cranked up beyond Metallica's tolerance. Especially when he's listening to some truly desperate trance bilge.
We need to work together on this one, people. Don't you agree? Huh?
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
Sadly enough, true or not, the scare tactics appear to be working on me.
As someone who already has less-than-perfect vision, the last thing I need when I'm 60 is to be blind AND deaf.
I value my hearing too much.
This news may very well keep me from buying an ipod.
For those who are concerned use a regular pair of headsets that fit over the ear rather than something stuck into the ear, and for gawd sakes don't turn it up MAX!
@karpenterskids: If you're not intelligent enough to operate a volume control wheel on an iPod, maybe you really shouldn't get one? It's not like you need the relflexes of a fighter pilot to set the volume to a cozy level then flip the lock switch, now is it?
/P
I'm no volume/music expert, but from what I've heard, the way ipod earbuds play music close to your eardrum is more dangerous than the same volume played from a speaker farther away.
You may hear the same sound intensity, but one causes more hearing loss than the other.
So maybe I could get an ipod, and simply use old-fashioned, over-the-ear headphones. idk
The style of phones have not changed, but now they are Shures and I can block external noise and get just the music, which means I listen to a lot lower level.
Over the years, I've been told many times my hearing was doomed. But I haven't noticed an insurgency of "huh's" in my speech.
Listening to loud music can make you go deaf!
Who the frak writes these thisng that are obvious to any 1st grader? And now link ipod to deafness? Well gee, living is bad for you because people tend to die from it. So stop living now!
Actually, first graders don't know that listening to loud music can make them deaf. Most people have heard it but their own short term experience says that it isn't true, so they ignore the warnings. It is only cumulative exposure that results in hearling loss, so people realize too late. This is exactly the kind of waring people need and you, for some reason, see fit to condemn it. Are you in some sort of pro-hearing loss group? Do you sell hearing aids for a living? Once can't help wonder what interest you have in condemning a valuable and timely evidence-based public warning...
Hmmmm. How does this compare to the rate of deafness in people who are mp3-free? Somehow, I'm willing to bet the ratio is the same OR HIGHER for non-users of mp3 players.
I have an ipod and I turn it down to the smallest volume it allows (as in, one more move of the wheel and the volume is OFF) -- and it's still a little too loud for what I want. If you get noise-isolating earphones and turn down the volume, you're doing yourself a HUGE favor
Congrats, you are doing well with your ears listening music at that volume.
What's next?
My coment grew up into a <a href="http://unoconcatorce.blogspot.com/2008/10/mp3-players-users-are-getting-deaf.html">post</a>.
- by ZephyrVolta October 17, 2008 2:53 PM PDT
- I don't understand this widespread clamor. I always thought it was common sense that loud sounds could hurt your hearing. I don't see why this applies specifically to iPod users, but really all these announcements don't come as a shock to me, and I don't get how it could possibly come as a shock to other people.
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