Sound is mechanical. A sound is a shove — just a little one, a tap on the tightly stretched membrane of your ear drum, according to an article in FiveThirtyEight. The louder the sound, the heavier the knock. If a sound is loud enough, it can rip a hole in your ear drum. If a sound is loud enough, it can plow into you like a linebacker and knock you flat on your butt.
The Safe-in-Sound Excellence in Hearing Loss Prevention Awards™ are presented each year at the Annual Conference of the National Hearing Conservation Association. The awards are co=sponsored by NHCA and NIOSH. The 2018 awards will be presented at this year’s National Hearing Conservation Association meeting, Feb. 15-17, in Orlando.
The annual meeting of hearing conservation and noise experts, members of NHCA, will be held next month at the Caribe Royale Orlando, FL.
NHCA was formed in June of 1976, at that time designated as the Hearing Conservation Association. The founders of NHCA were mainly audiologists and otolaryngologists who were concerned with the serious problem of noise-induced hearing impairment resulting from occupational exposure to noise.
Kansas City Chiefs fans' broke Seattle Seahawks' fans' record of having the loudest outdoor stadium by creating 142.2 decibels worth of noise at Arrowhead Stadium during a Monday night game on September 29, 2014.
By comparison, standing on an aircraft carrier has a noise level of 140 decibels. Standing 30 feet from a jet at take-off has a noise level of 150 decibels.
Research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on noise-induced hearing loss in non-workplace settings has produced some alarming statistics. Testing on nearly 4,000 adults in the U.S. in 2014 found that:
Approximately 15% of American adults, aged 18 and older, reported some degree of trouble with hearing—about as much as the prevalence reported for both diabetes and cancer combined (Vital Health Stat 10. 2014;260:1 http://bit.ly/2lZlMX0).
Nearly 24% of adults have measurable hearing damage in one or both ears.
Nearly 50% of adults with this damage were not exposed to noise at work (MMWR. 2017; 66[5]:139 http://bit.ly/2lZxpNr).
Leading noise monitoring specialist Cirrus Research has just completed a six-figure contract to supply the Costa Rican government with 50 of its Optimus Red sound level meters
November 10, 2017
The large order of 50 Optimus Reds were recently shipped to the Central American country where they are going to be deployed by the Government's Road Safety Council in a campaign to reduce traffic noise pollution in some of its most built-up cities such as the Capital, San Jose.
The Optimus Red kits had already been used by the Costa Rican police force and proved so popular among the officers for its user-friendly application and reading accuracy that the Road Safety Council followed suit.
10. Nursery Worker or Teacher (85 dB)
A class of 30 children can be exceptionally noisy. Nursery workers and teachers suffer the effects of excessive noise — up to 85 dB — which, with continued and prolonged exposure, can cause damage to the eardrum.
The most widespread and well-documented subjective response to noise is annoyance, which may include fear and mild anger, related to a belief that one is being avoidably harmed. Noise is also seen as intrusive into personal privacy, while its meaning for any individual is important in determining whether that person will be annoyed by it.
Evolution did not equip you to live in a world of constant noise. Your nervous system was engineered by natural selection for an environment of almost total quiet. Nature is mostly filled with soft, quiet sounds: leaves rustling, water trickling, insects buzzing. An animal call here and there. This is what your amygdala (the fear center in the brain) rates as a normal sound level. Sharp sounds, loud bangs, people yelling and crying, revving engines and the like all trigger a fear/danger response.
Unwanted and potentially unhealthy noise permeates everything we do -- our homes, offices, leisure time, even our sleep, says the National Academy of Engineering.
The worst noisemakers are machines -- all forms of transportation, including planes, trains, cars and trucks; lawnmowers, snow blowers, leaf blowers and other loud household products; and manufacturing machines.