Hearing damage 45 ACP

One hearing unprotected shot indoors with a .22 LR will permanently damage your hearing.

The ringing will lessen over time. There is probably some permanent hearing loss.

I'm not sure how you made it past the first shot without realizing it.

reddog81 said:

I'm not sure how you made it past the first shot without realizing it.

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People get used to doing it in favourable conditions. I shoot .223 in the desert without any hearing protection and hearing loss is not yet detected. However, if you're in a confined area, it changes everything.

AlexBradley said:

Lessen or stop completely? i did realize that i didnt have ear protection. i didnt know how bad it was for your ears. Lesson learned big time

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Impossible for me to guess. I have a slight ringing at all times. Mine is from a combination of shooting and rock/metal concerts. I’ve had bad ringing for days after concerts also. It has always lessened over time.

AlexBradley said:

i didnt know how bad it was for your ears. Lesson learned big time

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There's probably a lot of THR people who have learned that lesson the hard way, including myself.

AlexBradley said:

Lessen or stop completely?

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Impossible to know. For decades I wore no hearing protection and shot quite a bit (but not at proper ranges with folks side-by-side, though) and the only ringing that I experienced faded away after a short time.

When I was living in VaB in the 2nd half of the 70's I met a guy who had grown up in the city and never fired a gun.

I brought him with me on a visit to this farm. I had scored a couple of cases of Besa MG ammo so I brought along a K98k and a Wz29 plus an assortment of handguns.

He had a HOOT shooting all of the different firearms at target that we setup across the pond.

A few days after we returned home, he asked if my ears were still ringing. No. He said that his were.

His doctor told him that he now suffered from something called "tin tin itus" (that is what he said it was called) and would have to live with the ringing.

First that I or any of my shooting buddies that I asked had ever heard of "tin tin itus".

EDIT:
BTW, I do have the slightest bit of noticeable tinnitus, but not from shooting.

Back in, like, 2003 when I was acting as "wingman" for my dad after he stroked, I bought one of those compressed-air-can horns for my him to be used for real emergencies only after he put in the earplugs that I attached to the can (I might be in the basement or outside when he suffered an accident/fall).

Just last year I was cleaning out some of the stuff from Dad's room, arms full, when it all started falling and I grabbed ... and hit the button on that d@mned horn.

The duration of the blast of sound was brief, but it was painful ... and I knew that I had just done some permanent damage.

Luckily, the ringing is very slight ... but it is always there. <sigh>

The tinnitus club has many, many members. Your's may not last, but military war vets, heavy equipment operators or older former cops like me suffer from it. As I type, the ringing is going strong today. Best thing you can do is really start to protect yourself. I promise it will pay dividends later in life, no matter what your age.

zaitcev said:

People get used to doing it in favourable conditions. I shoot .223 in the desert without any hearing protection and hearing loss is not yet detected. However, if you're in a confined area, it changes everything.

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Just a word of caution from an old guy with a 30% hearing loss in both ears - "everything changes" when you "get used" to shooting .223 rifles and switch to handguns, even lowly .22 LR handguns, let alone a .45ACP like the OP was talking about. Don't shoot handguns without hearing protection, not even "in the desert," unless you want permanent hearing loss like I have.

AlexBradley said:

if this ringing <removed> doesnt stop soon idk what im gonna do withmyself

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First welcome to THR . I'm not any kind of expert on ringing in the ears but I found something that might help. If nothing works I'd go see a doctor.
http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Ringing-in-Ears

First time out shooting at an indoor range I used only a set of ear plugs. No where near enough protection as I had ringing in my ears for hours afterwards. Since then I always use a set of earplugs along with hearing protector earmuffs. No problems with any ringing or hearing loss.

Sometime the ringing will go away. Some noises are loud enough that a single exposure will irreversibly damage your hearing.

The cause of mine was not firearm related but nothing makes it better. Easier to fall asleep with some back ground noise.

Jack B. said:

First welcome to THR . I'm not any kind of expert on ringing in the ears but I found something that might help. If nothing works I'd go see a doctor.
http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Ringing-in-Ears

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Interesting, and might be helpful. Thanks for post that link, Jack B..

zaitcev said:

People get used to doing it in favourable conditions. I shoot .223 in the desert without any hearing protection and hearing loss is not yet detected. However, if you're in a confined area, it changes everything.

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I don't know how much it takes -- not a lot, but firing .223 w/o earpro WILL cause hearing damage, even in the wild open outdoors.

I don't recommend shooting without ear protection. It is true that firing one shot will damage your hearing. Even with hearing protection. It just causes less damage and takes longer for it to become apparent. The best analogy I can think of is to compare it to smoking. One cigarette will damage your lungs, just as one shot fired without hearing protection will damage your hearing. The question is how many cigarettes and how many shots before there is enough damage to be an issue. Some smoke for years and have little damage, some have issues much sooner. The same with shooting.

My dad was born in 1923, served during WW-2 and worked in a factory around loud machinery his whole life. He never used any hearing protection. He smoked a pack of cigarettes a day from age 19 until he quit at age 62. He died one week short of his 90'th birthday with no lung damage and very little hearing loss. Many others weren't so lucky. Dad had several friends and relatives who were also in combat during WW-2 and were exposed to a lot more gunfire than the average person. All had some slight hearing loss, but nothing detrimental. Based on the experiences of my dads friends it was the guys in artillery units that were most likely to have serious hearing loss.

I'm 59 and didn't start wearing hearing protection until I was in my 30's. I've shot a lot of magnum handgun rounds, hundreds of shotshells in a day of dove hunting and plenty of centerfire rifles with no protection prior to about 30 years ago. My hearing was slightly reduced in one ear by this, but not enough to affect anything. Doctors told me that the tones I couldn't hear were not normal tones I'd encounter anyway. If I were a music teacher by profession it might have caused problems.

The ringing will PROBABLY go away and your hearing return to close enough to normal that you won't notice. But the more you expose your ears, the more damage you do and eventually it will reach a point where you will be impaired. On the other hand there are cases where a single shot causes enough problems to be detrimental. I no longer shoot intentionally without both plugs and muffs. But realize that someday I may have to shoot in a SD situation where ear protection isn't possible.

so does anyone know how bad specifically 45 acp rounds are for your ears? Ive tried searching it and cant get any good answers. Will my ear be the same? its only the left one specifally.

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You asked while I was typing my other reply. All can do damage, but rounds like 45 ACP and 9mm are much more forgiving than 357 and 44 mag rounds. This is one reason for the trend away from magnum revolvers in police work. There have been several officers who suffered serious hearing loss from firing magnum rounds inside enclosed areas.

took me about 7 years to get hearing aides, and boy howdy, why'd i wait so long, amazing the things i haven't heard for years. best part is, when the young grandkids come to visit, I take'm out, hehe, no worries.

still wear major hearing protection, even though i'm dang near deaf.

between the corp, the skil saw, and shooting trap for years, even with protection, its going away slowly
good luck with it
Rj

AlexBradley wrote:
Lessen or stop completely?

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Everyone's different so it's hard to say.

The volume of the ringing in my ears from uprotected exposure to gunfire dropped by half over the course of several months and then it stopped getting better and has since been continuous for the past 34 years.

The lipo-flavanoid stuff they sell in the drugstore has helped some people who use it shortly after exposure. I didn't find out about it until years later and it didn't do anything for me.