preventing noise hearing loss with protection

Noises are all around you and it’s something that is harmful to your health given how loud the noise is. Consistent exposure of loud noises is detrimental to your health because of the damage it does to the little hairs in your ear responsible for sending signals to your brain. You can experience temporary loss after coming out of a concert and everything seems to be muffled. This is due to the hairs stopping the transmission to the brain. Concerts no doubt can cause hearing loss but you probably don’t go the concerts frequently. Day to day tasks such as mowing the lawn and using the blower to blow off the leaves on the driveway is something that I more common place. These tasks can really take a toll on your hearing after a while and it is suggested that you wear hearing protection while preforming these tasks. Noise is rated in DB’s or Decibels. An unsafe decibel rating is a rating over 85.   To combat these high numbers of DB’s there are hearing earmuffs and earplugs that cancel some of that noise. These forms of hearing protection come with a rating when you purchase one the higher the rating the better. When shopping for noise reduction earmuffs or earplugs you need to look at the NRR, or the noise reduction rating. The highest rating for both are rated at 30 or 31 however this is under ideal conditions so really you need to take that number and cut it in half to get the true rating. Because the rating is really half what it says it is in order to have optimal protection you should wear both the noise earmuffs and earplugs. This gives you a much better NRR rating. Failure to use hearing protection can lead to conditions such as tinnitus which is when you hear constant ringing in your ears. This doesn’t sound bad but it has been known to cause people to take their own life because it is irreversible and is chronic for the rest of your life.