The World Health Organization recognizes the risk of NIHL, do you?
More and more children are suffering from hearing difficulties today, and one of the major causes is noise-induced hearing loss. This is the effect of exposure to loud noises degrading hearing, and one of the major contributors to that is constantly listening to music or video through headphones with the volume turned too loud. As you can imagine, that is a scenario that happens with a broad range of young people. Kid’s wireless headphones are everywhere because that is what they do, listen to music or watch videos on portable devices.
However, despite 1 in 8 children suffering from hearing loss as a result of noise-induced hearing loss, and as many as 1 in 5 between 12 and 19 years of age, awareness of this issue remains low. This is why the World Health Organization releasing their own training package regarding children and noise, including the dangers of noise-induced hearing loss, is so important.
In the new training guide for the health sector, they discuss the thresholds of human hearing and how loud sounds, such as through kid’s Bluetooth headphones that are turned up to loud, can cause permanent hearing damage. Because this literature is distributed through the WHO to a variety of readers, including educators and health professionals, this can only be a good thing in raising more awareness of the issues surrounding noise-induced hearing loss.
For instance, the World Health Organization notes that a busy urban street has a noise level of around 90dB, and that can lead to chronic hearing damage if exposure is greater than 8 hours at a time. They also state that if you turn headphones up too loud, they can reach 130dB, so it is clear that there is a definite issue that needs dealing with.
Even the best kid’s headphones can contribute to this situation, which is why Puro Sound Labs have created volume limiting kid’s headphones. These kid’s Bluetooth headphones have a built-in volume limiter, so that no matter how far the volume is turned up on a device, it will not exceed the listening level of 85 decibels. To help curb the effects of noise-induced hearing loss in kids.
That is an excellent way to deal with overly loud volume when listening through headphones, and it is a permanent limit that cannot be overridden, A pair of those volume limiting Bluetooth kid’s headphones will help protect your child’s ears even if they do try and turn the volume up when you are not looking.
However, the WHO raise another great point, while for our children the most obvious cause of noise induced hearing loss may be from listening to music of video through headphones, there are causes of loud noise all around, and we should all be more aware of them when out and about with our children.