iPods & ears

Everyone using an iPod or any MP3 player needs to read this story. Undoubtedly because of the iPod's popularity, Pete Townshend's warning was picked up by news outlets worldwide. The Who guitarist said it was his use of earphones in the recording studio, not the loud music he played on stage, that caused irreparable damage to his hearing (he "has to take 36-hour breaks between recording sessions to allow his ears to recover," the Associated Press reports). But earbuds are the worst. "In a study published last year in the journal Ear and Hearing, researchers at Harvard Medical School looked at a variety of headphones and found that, on average, the smaller they were, the higher their output levels at any given volume-control setting." Because tiny phones in ears so far don't do a good enough job of blocking outside sounds, people compensate by cranking up the volume. Northwestern University audiologist and professor Dean Garsecki told the Scripps Howard News Service that he has a colleague at Wichita State U. who pulls earbuds out of students' ears and asks them if he can measure their output. He often finds them listening at about rock concert level - "enough to cause hearing loss after only about an hour and 15 minutes," Scripps Howard reports. And an Australian study found that about a quarter of iPod users 18-54 listen at volumes sufficient to cause hearing damage. The BBC quotes an entry in Townshend's Web site as saying, "I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf. My intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead."

What to do? "The rule of thumb suggested by researchers at Boston Children's Hospital is to hold the volume of a music player no higher than 60% of the maximum, and use it for only about an hour a day," Scripps Howard reports.