Say What??!!

[PinnedAndRecessed]

Some people on another forum are debating hearing loss vs. hearing protection. I thought this might be interesting.

Gradual hearing loss may occur after prolonged exposure to 90 decibels or above.

Exposure to 100 decibels for more than 15 minutes can cause hearing loss.

Exposure to 110 decibels for more than a minute can cause permanent hearing loss.

Here are some examples of noise levels:

Video arcades - (110 dB).

Firecrackers - (125-155 dB at a distance of 10 feet).

Live music concerts - (120 dB and above).

Movie theatres - (118 dB).

Health clubs and aerobic studios (120 dB).

Sporting events (127 dB).

Motorboats - (85-115 dB).

Motorcycles - (95-120 dB).

Snowmobiles - (99 dB).

"Boom cars" - (140 dB and above).

Here are noise levels of firearms:

.223, 55GR. Commercial load 18" barrel 155.5dB

.243 in 22" barrel 155.9dB

.30-30 in 20" barrel 156.0dB.

7mm Magnum in 20" barrel 157.5dB.

.308 in 24" barrel 156.2dB.

.30-06 in 24" barrel 158.5dB. In 18" barrel 163.2dB.

.375 18" barrel with muzzle brake 170 dB.

.410 Bore 28" barrel 150dB. 26" barrel 150.25dB. 18" barrel 156.30dB.

20 Gauge 28" barrel 152.50dB. 22" barrel 154.75dB.

12 Gauge 28" barrel 151.50dB. 26" barrel 156.10dB. 18" barrel 161.50dB.

.25 ACP 155.0 dB.

.32 LONG 152.4 dB.

.32 ACP 153.5 dB.

.380 157.7 dB.

9mm 159.8 dB.

.38 S&W 153.5 dB.

.38 Spl 156.3 dB.

.357 Magnum 164.3 dB.

.41 Magnum 163.2 dB.

.44 Spl 155.9 dB.

.45 ACP 157.0 dB.

.45 COLT 154.7 dB.

Properly fitted earplugs or muffs reduce noise 15 to 30 dB. The better earplugs and muffs are approximately equal in sound reductions, although earplugs are better for low frequency noise and earmuffs for high frequency noise.

All of us should be trying to get the greatest Noise Reduction Rating (NRR) that can be put together. NRR 30 plugs with NRR 20 muffs will give you an effective NRR 45 (add plugs and muffs, then subtract 5). If noise levels are 160 dB this gives you an exposure with plugs and muffs of 115 dB. The acceptable exposure time for this is 15 minutes total for the day. If the noise levels are 150 dB the resultant acceptable exposure time with the given plugs and muffs is 1 hour and 4 hours if the noise level is 140 dB. You're not going to find unsuppressed noise levels below 140dB with gunfire.

If you are shooting by yourself, roughly 100 rounds of 140 dB instantaneous noise in a day should not produce hearing damage. Put your plugs and muffs on and you get to shoot up to a thousand rounds without damage (louder ammo/gun and the allowable drops by a factor of 5). Shoot with other people and you have to add all the rounds shot cumulatively (10 people shoot 100 rounds and everybody's done for the day; toss a handcannon or 30 cal rifle in and you're back down to 200 rounds cumulative). If you shoot on an indoor range then all the rounds fired while you are on the range go into your total. So you can see that it doesn't take very long on a range to have a thousand rounds popped off around you.

If you want to know what the noise level you are exposed to is you can rent noise dosimeters that you can wear. They will record the total noise exposure and present the information to you as dB. You can then subtract the adjusted combined NRR of your hearing protection to determine if you're getting too much exposure.

 

[MSgt B]

Read and Heed!

The hearing loss creeps up on you.

I started getting the comments from my family 2-3 years ago. "You always have the TV up so loud..etc"

By now I'm down about 40% in my left ear and 15% in my right.

Even if you are wearing hearing protection, take a break now and again and give your ears a rest. No standard ear muff/plug hearing protection is absolute. Prolonged exposure will still do it's damage.

BTW, my poison was jet noise, not firearms.

 

[hso]

Excellent information, but there are a couple of important details that should be discussed.

You should not just take the sum of the NRR when you use both plugs and muffs. The classical approach when both are properly worn is that you sum the two and then subtract 5-7 dB. The key is properly because much of the time plugs are not properly worn and it is relatively easy to wear muffs properly. If the plugs are not inserted deeply into the ear canal they do not provide rated protection. Now for the annoying kicker. Recent studies in industrial settings indicate that the number given for the NRR for plugs is far less dependable than for muffs and that the plugs that are closest to actually performing as advertised are the old foam cylinder plugs. In addition, due to the difference in frequency response curves for plugs and muffs (the previously mentioned plugs for hi and muffs for low) it's no longer a given that you can even add the two and subtract 5 dB. New data that OSHA is using for guidance indicates that when you stack plugs and muffs you take the NRR for the plugs and you only add 5 dB protection for the muffs (or take the higher of the two and add 5 dB for the lesser). An NRR 30 set of foam plugs worn under a 30 dB set of muffs then only provides a total of 35 dB protection. The bad news is balanced against 160 dB small arms noise you still get 125 dB exposure with each shot (albeit of very short duration). Add each of those fractional seconds of exposure together during a shooting session and you get your exposure over time. OSHA sets a maximum limit of 140 dB peak sound pressure level for up to 100 impulses a day, with a 10 dB decrease in allowable level for a 10-fold increase in the number of impulses (eg. 100 shots if 140 dB). For noise levels of 1700+ noise souces, including small arms, artilery and explosions, see - http://www.e-a-r.com/pdf/hearingcons/NoiseNav.xls

The one bright spot in all this is that US Army studies indicate that if several seconds are taken between each shot and that shooting sessions occur only once in every 72 hours no mesurable permanent threshold shift is detected (your hearing is not permanently damaged). I'm not completely comfortable with the dependability of this "bright spot", but I've seen the studies and they are interesting.

If you want to measure the noise exposure you receive during a shooting session use a noise dosimeter that is has the specialized circuitry for impact noise (linear frequency response, response time 1/1000th that of the noise, records peak) that will report your TWA.

 

[el44vaquero]

I see lips moving, but yet nothing.

 

[Taurus 66]

.357 Magnum 164.3 dB.

Sheesh, according to these numbers, I have one of the worst weapons lying in defense at my bedside .. especially being in an enclosed space (14x14 room). Just one shot from it if and when needed could lead to a lifetime of hearing problems. What to do. ' Can't sleep all the time with muffs on my ears.

 

[Berek]

The hearing loss creeps up on you.

I started getting the comments from my family 2-3 years ago. "You always have the TV up so loud..etc"

By now I'm down about 40% in my left ear and 15% in my right.

Even if you are wearing hearing protection, take a break now and again and give your ears a rest. No standard ear muff/plug hearing protection is absolute. Prolonged exposure will still do it's damage.

BTW, my poison was jet noise, not firearms.

Mine came on suddenly. Or so it seemed. I had been shooting on and off for about 1.5 hours... Shot 1 cylinder of .357Mag and then my left ear began ringing and hurting. Mild pain like a nail slowly being pressed in (ie sharp, but slight) and there's been a constant noise in there ever since. Even when it's dead quiet here and I put in ear plugs.

If I'd remembered then what I knew all along, I would have worn my muffs...

"Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" (Jerry Van Dyke on an episode of Drew Carey as he stomped around in an LV casino fountain.)

 

[michakav]

WHAT!!!!!!!! Did you say something?

 

[michakav]

Seriously, I have diagnosed hearing loss due to firearms with no hearing protection. This happened 18 yrs. ago when I didn't know any better. ALWAYS WEAR PROTECTION. (hearing and on the JIMMY)

 

[10 Ring Tao]

Mine came on suddenly. Or so it seemed. I had been shooting on and off for about 1.5 hours... Shot 1 cylinder of .357Mag and then my left ear began ringing and hurting. Mild pain like a nail slowly being pressed in (ie sharp, but slight) and there's been a constant noise in there ever since. Even when it's dead quiet here and I put in ear plugs.

If I'd remembered then what I knew all along, I would have worn my muffs...

"Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" (Jerry Van Dyke on an episode of Drew Carey as he stomped around in an LV casino fountain.)

Hello acute tinnitus!

 

[JohnBT]

Ain't nothing cute about tinnitus. That whistling teakettle has been following me around for at least 20 years.

John

 

[pcf]

Couple things, just because you didn't notice the noise at the time (auditory exclusion), when your hunting etc, doesn't mean that damage isn't occuring.

Decibels measure sound pressure and are logarithmic, a 3db increase almost doubles sound pressure, a 6db increase quadruples sound pressure.

I had tinnitus for years before the problem was diagnosed. Some times it shows up on its own, but usually its a unique sound that sets it off. The tone from "off air" TV channels (starts it off for hours), my wife's tea kettle, whistling sound from the faucet. If you hear a high pitched, low volume tone and then ringing in your ears, for hours, you might want to get it checked out.

 

[Kingcreek]

The .257 Roberts that went bang INSIDE the cab of the old ranch truck caused instant ear pain for almost 2 weeks and ringing in my ears for the past 40 years. old truck cab with a steel dash, no headliner or carpet, and the windows rolled up. cousin left a round in the chamber of the rifle in the back window gunrack and bouncing along the ranch road was enough to jiggle the safety off and trip the sear. cousin driving and the butt towards him, suffered no damage. If it weren't for preachers and politicians, this hearing loss would be totally inconvenient.

 

[MrTwigg]

Exposure to 110 decibels for more than a minute can cause permanent hearing loss.

Yeah, and I also heard if you eat just one cheesburger you can die on the spot from a heart attack.

I have to take things like this with a grain of salt. I won't deny that prolonged exposure to excessive sound levels can cause eventual hearing loss. Just how much is excessive and how long is prolonged is debateable.

A lot depends on genetics.

I rode motorcycles with open pipes for most of my adult life, driven trucks and heavy equiupment, am currently a woodworker ( I do wear earplugs when I've got the table saw running.). I'm 50 and still have have perfect hearing. I have a few friends who don't hear as well as they used to and their hearing loss is obvious, although they won't admit it.

I do believe sudden sharp loud sounds can be damaging so I wear earplugs when I shoot. As far as the rest goes...

Just my $.02.

 

[Nightfall]

I use plugs and muffs (pain in the butt that it is w/ stocks), but I'd still love to see a huge upsurge in sound suppressor use. But that ain't gonna happen unless laws change and a can becomes a simple, relatively inexpensive accessory rather than an upper echelon, paper work intensive (relatively speaking) perk you register with BATFE.

Oh, I forgot, firearms are bad because they're dangerous to use, and "silencers" are bad because they make firearms safer to use. Or something like that.

 

[PinnedAndRecessed]

For what it's worth, I, too, am a member of the "ringing ears" club. I don't know exactly when it happened but I suspect it was bird hunting. Particularly dove hunting.

Surrounded by other hunters. Shotguns firing repeatedly. And it was not cool to wear hearing protection.

But it was fun!

 

[Herself]

I use earplugs and earmuffs when shooting, but I had tinnitis, earaches, migraines and trigeminal neuralgia-type pain for years, long before I started shooting on a regular basis.

An hour or two spent at the range usually leaves me feeling better! Since most of the ickiness stems from some "interesting" (not!) sinus problems and the Uncool Places A Tooth Root Can Go (see above, "not interesting"), my best guess is that it's the overpressure somehow settling things down in my sinuses.

My work has led to some hearing loss -- big air-cooled transmitters aren't as bad as a jet engine but they're not good, either. None of us geniuses thought about it when we installed the one that takes 24,000 cfm of air to cool, either, so it was a number of years before any of us started using hearing protection around the big rig. It doesn't sound nearly as loud as it is!

--Herself

 

[dfaugh]

I have pretty significant hearing loss(haven't had it tested), as well as major tinnitis in both ears. This is a result of:

Shooting w/o hearing protection, when I was younger
Many years around race cars w/o hearing protection
LOTS of loud rock concerts

I'm 50 now, but started having problems at 45...Seems its now getting worse by the day...

So all I can say is, DO WHATEVER YOU CAN, THE BEST YOU CAN....'Cause its a b**ch to walk around saying "huh?" all the time!!!!!!

 

[Biker]

I spent a few years shooting 155mm howitzers. They gave us foam earplugs as I recall, then spent the next 20 or so years playing in blues/blues rock bands in bars. My Harleys have always had straight pipes and although I've never had my hearing tested, as far as I can tell, I hear things just fine.
Biker

 

[hso]

Go see a doc or audiologist and get tested. What you think is normal may not be and to put it off is no better than some sheeple denying crime exists in their personal universe.

 

[PinnedAndRecessed]

Sheesh, according to these numbers, I have one of the worst weapons lying in defense at my bedside .. especially being in an enclosed space (14x14 room). Just one shot from it if and when needed could lead to a lifetime of hearing problems. What to do. ' Can't sleep all the time with muffs on my ears.

Another thread is talking about a guy wanting to take a handgun into Alaskan bear territory. Somebody suggested the new "Bear Protection Kit" which is a S&W revolver chambered for .460 Smith and Wesson.



One shot out of this and he's deaf.

Here's hoping the bear at which he shoots is traveling alone, because he'll never hear the one that gets him.

 

[Biker]

Go see a doc or audiologist and get tested. What you think is normal may not be and to put it off is no better than some sheeple denying crime exists in their personal universe.

Hmmmm? Whatssat?

Just kiddin'. You might be right though. I'll have it checked at my next VA physical.
Biker

 

[MEDDAC19]

Those of you that say you've been exposed to loud noises for years and still hear normal, get your hearing tested. Most hearing loss is slow and incremental, so you have been adapting to your loss of hearing and don't notice any changes. A lot of people that get tested have hearing loss, and often significant loss, while unaware that it has happened. There may be significant losses in specific frequency ranges. The losses in some frequencies may not seem apparent due to normal conversation occuring in a different range, but any loss is not good and the results are cumulative, so it is better to be safe. I'm amazed that folks that CC for what most would consider, a very slight chance that their gun would be needed, take such a nonchalant attitude about hearing loss, which is guaranteed to occur without any hearing protection.

 

[hso]

I'll have it checked at my next VA physical.
Biker

With all due respect to the VA, make sure that you find out if the have a certified tech to run the booth. If not get it done somewhere else.

For everyone that hasn't had their hearing checked answer the following questions for yourself -

When I get in the car after my non-shooting spouse has driven it do I often have to turn the volume on the radio up a notch.

When I come into the TV room and my spouse is already watching a program do I have to turn the volume up?

When I get into the car first thing in the morning do I have to turn the volume down and at the end of the work day back up?

 

[Biker]

hso...

Actually, since I have no health insurance, the VA is the only game in town for me, and that town is in SLC. .
What're ya gonna do?
Biker

 

[ctdonath]

Sheesh, according to these numbers, I have one of the worst weapons lying in defense at my bedside .

That's why I've got a suppressed AR15 SBR on order. Using the 12ga in the bedroom at 4AM amounts to detonating a flashbang grenade 2' from my face; an accurate followup shot would not soon follow, and I'd be reading (not hearing) the grand jury's questions afterwards. A suppressed HD gun will still be loud, but not disorienting/disabling.