Sound Pressure Levels & Ear Damage

[BradJudy]

Do you clean your ears with q-tips? If so, you might be pushing wax back and causing the ringing. It happened to me. Once I stopped using q-tips, the ringing went away after several days.

I clean my ears with one of these now: The Ototek Loop - Safe and Simple Earwax Removal and I haven't had problems with ringing.

[gregorio]

There is a lot of mis-understandings and mis-information about hearing damage and safe listening levels, this is for two main reasons:

1. No one knows for sure what constitutes "safe" listening levels, and

2. No two people have identical hearing.

The figures for safe listening levels vary according to the organisation publishing the data and how often they review the latest research. As a general rule, the "safe" SPL levels published by various governments have been reducing over the last few decades as research shows that damage can be caused at lower and lower SPLs. Whether an individual will damage their hearing at a particular SPL is impossible to say with any confidence, unless we are talking about very high SPLs.

Bare in mind also that Tinnitus (ringing in the ears) is a symptom of Temporary Threshold Shift (TTS), Permanent Threshold Shift (PTS) and indeed a number of other conditions. Therefore you should not automatically conclude that if you're suffering from Tinnitus you have hearing damage. Likewise, you can have hearing damage and not suffer from Tinnitus.

The vast majority of human beings suffer from Tinnitus at some point in their lives, even if only for a few minutes. If it's becoming annoying you should visit a doctor, as some of the conditions which cause Tinnitus can be cured.