Loud Toys For Children Can Cause Hearing Loss

Watch Out For “Noisy Toys”

Each holiday season, millions of American parents, grandparents, uncles, nieces, other relatives, and family friends shop for and purchase toys for youngsters.

Yet while the toys are supposed to bring happy times and smiles to the faces of the children, many are designed by the manufacturer to be loud… and that is not a good thing. In fact some are so loud that they can cause permanent hearing damage after only a few minutes of exposure to a child.

How Loud Can Toys Really Be?

Just how loud can some children’s toys be? According to the Sight & Hearing Association – a nonprofit organization founded in 1939 with the goal of preventing needless loss of vision and hearing – there are a number of toys on the market that emit sound in excess of 90 decibels (dB) with some approaching 120 dB. For comparison, a chainsaw operates at 110dB! …

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Untreated Hearing Loss

The Consequences of Untreated Hearing Loss: Why You Shouldn’t Wait To Seek Help For A Hearing Difficulty

After over 30 years as an audiologist, I have heard a lot of reasons from a lot of patients as to why they had not addressed their hearing difficulties sooner.

And of course, I always explain to them that ignoring a hearing difficulty won’t make it go away, and that there are consequences for not treating a hearing loss.

Now there is even more evidence – gleaned from scientific studies by some of the top researchers in the world – to support what audiologists like myself and many of my colleagues with AudigyGroup have been saying all along: don’t wait to get tested and – if the tests do indeed show a hearing loss – discuss treatment options with your hearing care professional.

These studies clearly show that hearing loss doesn’t just affect one’s ability to hear the TV or communicate with a spouse, friends, or co-workers. There can be …

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Young Ag Workers Chico CA

Youngsters in Agriculture Need to Protect Their Hearing, Too!

With agriculture being such a huge economic base here in the North State, it’s no wonder that a number of farmers and ranchers are patients of mine. Hearing loss due to exposure to loud machines and vehicles is pretty commonplace amongst those in ag. In fact, it is estimated that 80% of all farmers in the United States have some hearing loss.

What is troubling is that many – too many — of those farmers and ranchers are not the fifty-something or sixty-something year olds that one might expect. They are young people; some as young as grade school age!

How can that be? Simply that these young people get exposed to loud farm machinery at an early age. Couple that with the louder and louder environment that our society has become through use of devices like personal music systems and these youngsters in ag are getting the proverbial double …

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Hearing Loss And Hearing Aid Myths Debunked – Fiction vs. Fact

A recently completed study by Johns Hopkins University – published on November 14, 2011 in the Archives of Internal Medicine – now confirms that 1 in 5 Americans have hearing loss in at least one ear.  This is well over 50 million people and far exceeds previous hearing care industry estimates of approximately 25 million.

The Johns Hopkins study is unique in that the data used statistically corresponded with the entire US population by including both men and women of all races, aged 12 and older, living in cities throughout the country.

Using the World Health Organization’s definition of hearing loss – not being able to hear sounds of 25 decibels or less in the speech frequencies – the Johns Hopkins researchers found that over 30 million Americans have hearing loss in both ears and that over 20% of the population – in excess of 50 million people – have …

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Baby Boomers – The Next Generation to Have Hearing Difficulties

For many of you between the ages of 46 to 64, your time is coming.

Time, that is, to experience what so many of your parents and grandparents came to learn of fist hand: hearing difficulties caused by exposure to excess loud noise.

The “Baby Boomer” generation – those Americans born between 1946 and 1960 – accounts for some 76 million of us in the Untied States today and at least 15 percent of Boomers already have hearing loss.

This is a far cry from the previous 2 generations, who typically did not show symptoms of hearing loss until they were in their 70’s and 80’s.  Indeed, when I was an audiology student at Minot State University earning my Master’s of Science degree I was taught that only men in their 70’s and 80’s got hearing loss.

What has changed?  Our world is now much, much louder.

An Unprecedented Century

Prior to …

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