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Digital music craze stores up ear trouble for iPod fanatics |
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Sunday, 08 May 2005 |
Digital music craze
stores up ear trouble for iPod fanatics
Scotsman - Edinburgh,Scotland,UK
MUSIC fans have been warned to turn down or switch off their iPods amid
fears the craze for MP3 players is storing up catastrophic and irreversible
hearing damage for a generation.
The iPod - like all digital music players - is compact, stores huge amounts of
music and can play for many hours. As a result, more people are listening for
longer to their favourite tracks.
But audiologists believe tens of thousands of young people are causing serious
damage to themselves, and are likely to suffer tinnitus and loss of hearing in
later life. The experts say MP3 players should be designed to prevent people
playing music above 90 decibels, about two-thirds of the maximum volume of a
typical device.
Perhaps more worryingly for people who have 3,000 songs stored on an iPod, they
also say listening should be restricted to no more than an hour a day.
The original Walkman played cassettes with a maximum duration of two hours,
while portable CD players give up to 80 minutes a disc. A typical MP3 player,
however, can store up to 300 hours of music and has batteries that last for 12
hours before needing to be recharged.
Volume controls on many of the machines can be cranked up to in excess of 100
decibels, equivalent to standing five metres from a pneumatic drill.
"It would obviously be beneficial to reduce the volume and restrict the usage of
personal players," said Christine DePlacido, principal audiological scientist at
the Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy. "The difficulty is in persuading people to do
this before their hearing is damaged, as many believe hearing loss will not
happen to them until they are much older.
DePlacido added: "A lot of the young people I see with tinnitus describe
listening to music at high intensities. It would be hard to say how great this
problem is, bearing in mind I only see people who are distressed by their
tinnitus. I imagine there are a lot more people out there who are just living
with it."
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