Word: musics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Trust us, your hearing will thank you for it. While many music lovers are aware that listening to iPods and MP3 players at high volumes can lead to hearing loss, not many of them - especially not teens - do anything about it. In fact, when teens are pressured by friends or family to turn down the volume on their iPods, they do exactly what you'd expect them to do: they turn the volume up instead. Even teens who express concern about the risk of hearing loss listen to music at potentially dangerous levels - higher on average than kids...
...what researchers at Colorado University and Children's Hospital in Boston found in a small study of 30 young iPod users. Led by Cory Portnuff, an audiologist at Colorado who began studying iPod-related hearing loss in 2006, the study found that teens not only tend to play music louder than adults, but they are often unaware of how loud they're playing it. "I honestly don't believe that most people understand they are putting themselves at risk, or at what level of risk," says Portnuff. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens...
...long-term hearing - a useful cutoff point to keep in mind. (But softer is better: you can safely tune in at 70% volume for about 4½ hours a day.) The risk of permanent hearing loss, Portnuff says, can increase with just five minutes of exposure a day to music at full volume. Over time, the noise can damage the delicate hair cells in the inner ear that transform sound waves to the electrical signals that the brain understands as sound...
...these misconceptions the fact that people are listening to music for longer periods of time - today's long-lasting batteries can crank out music for 15 hours or more - and it's no wonder that the risk of hearing loss is increasing. But perhaps so is the concern. In 2006 a Louisiana man filed suit against Apple, claiming that iPods are "not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of hearing loss." Soon after, health authorities in France demanded increased safety measures. So the company, based in Cupertino, Calif., revised its software to set the maximum volume...
...Portnuff acknowledges that most iPod and MP3 users don't keep their devices at maximum volume - only about 7% to 24% listen at risky levels. But because most of us can, and are, spending more time listening to music through headphones, there is a real risk of hearing loss for anyone who plugs in. "It's a matter of how high you listen and for how long," he says. Listen for too high and too long, and you may have to replace those headphones with hearing aids in the not-too-distant future...