5 ms·

Doesn't that permanently damage the hearing?

• Semiapies 13y ago
  Certainly can.
• shin_lao 13y ago
  Yes it does.
• ihsw 13y ago
  It's permanently damaged in the sense that a bridge is permanently damaged by people walking over it -- simply put, hearing sound erodes your ear drums regardless of how minute it is. Now, whether listening to really loud things escalates the hearing loss is probably what you were asking. If a million people were shuffling along a bridge and they all walked gently then the bridge will be damaged minimally, but if a hundred trucks that weigh several tons drive across the bridge then that damage would be quite severe. A million people regularly shuffling every day would be quite damaging over a long period of time, but the effect of a thousand large trucks is far more damaging. My point is, listening to really loud low frequency sounds isn't as damaging as listening to really loud high frequency sounds. Now, my comparison is really poor and heavy trucks cause far more damage than people, but the comparison between 'low frequency' and 'high frequency' is apt -- high damage to roads comes from high weight concentrated on a small point of impact in the same way that high damage to hearing comes from high frequency sound.
  • vanderZwan 13y ago
    > It's permanently damaged in the sense that a bridge is permanently damaged by people walking over it -- simply put, hearing sound erodes your ear drums regardless of how minute it is. Except that bridges aren't self-repairing organisms, so the analogy is flawed in that sense too.
    • shin_lao 13y ago
      The damaged nerves in the ears do not heal.
      • vanderZwan 13y ago
        He was talking about "eroding ear drums".
  • Groxx 13y ago
    This would be a valid comparison if the bridge healed itself. Similarly, walking damages your leg bones due to the impact / stress of gravity - but your bones actually strengthen due to use, as they are continuously being rebuilt, and they adapt to such changes. Too much can definitely cause permanent damage, but below that point it's not necessarily cumulative.
    • vacri 13y ago
      Bridges generally do heal themselves - they have a small colony of symbiotic (parasitic?) humans that take care of them. Some bridges fall into disrepair because their symbiotes have been compromised.
  • mikeweiss 13y ago
    I stopped reading at "Sound erodes your ear drums", you obviously wrote all this but have no clue about how the ear actually works. Its not the ear drum that gets damaged over time, its the hair cells inside the cochlea that eventually die.
    • ihsw 13y ago
      Yeah I tried to keep domain-specific terminology to a minimum, most people don't know their sense of hearing comes from sensitive hairs in their ears. Good catch though, and sorry if it made you cringe.
• chiph 13y ago
  Hearing damage is cumulative. Between my time in the military (my work-center was near some F-16 hangars) and several years participating in competitive pistol shooting (hearing protection worn), I now sometimes have trouble understanding people. Just like getting your vision checked, you should get your hearing checked periodically. Age plays a factor. As you get older, the nerves in your ear become less sensitive and the structures in the ear can become less responsive to sound.