Cicadas Can Cause Permanent Hearing Loss!

Cicadas are pretty darn ugly... But beyond their ugliness and making cars look pretty messed up... the sound they make is not only irritating, but potentially harmful. Sometime the end of this April 2013, billions of large flying insects called cicadas will make their appearance along with their characteristic stridorous noise. The male cicadas are the ones making this mating noise with "tymbal" soundmakers amplified by large resonance chambers found on body. Occurring every 1…

4/11/2013 2

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Phone App That Measures How Loudly You Listen to Your Music!

There are plenty of sound meters in the market for iPhone and Android smartphones that tell a user how  loud the surrounding noise is. Many of these apps are free. However, rather than recording the loudness of the surrounding environment, there is now a new phone app called Safe and Sound (only for Android phones) that measures the decibel level of the sound emitted from headphones and gives the user a clear indication of how loud their music really is. Furthermore, it also records the u…

7/10/2012 0

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Noise Charts as It Relates to Hearing Damage

Fun hearing facts collected from a variety of sources... Environmental Noise Weakest sound heard 0dB Whisper Quiet Library at 6' 30dB Normal conversation at 3' 60-65dB Telephone dial tone 80dB City Traffic (inside car) 85dB Train whistle at 500', Truck Traffic 90dB Jackhammer at 50' 95dB Subway train at 200' 95dB Level at which sustained exposure may result in hearing loss 90 - 95dB Hand Drill 98dB Power mower at 3' 107dB Snowmobile, Motorcycle 100dB Po…

5/21/2012 0

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Human Ear Contains a Built-In "Ear Plug"

According to one Australian researcher , by just chewing a gum or singing/talking loudly, one could be protecting your ears from noise-induced hearing damage. How??? It is not common knowledge that the human ear contains two muscles that attach to the middle ear bones called the stapedius and tensor tympani muscles. The middle ear bones, composed of the malleus, incus, and stapes, are what transmits sounds from the eardrum to the cochlea which allows a person to hear. The stapedius muscle…

12/01/2011 3

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Neat ENT-Related iPhone Applications (Decibel Meter and Tinnitus Relief)

So I was browsing around the app store on iTunes and encountered a few applications that may be of interest to readers... The first is related to measuring in decibels the ambient noise level called "Volume Decibel Reader". I like it in that it has a handy chart that shows what can happen to your hearing if you remain in the environment. You simply open the application and hit start and hold up the phone up in the air. The other application purportedly provides tinnitus relief in a m…

6/21/2009 1

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