While taking an early morning or evening walk, crossing the street, boarding a metro, travelling in a bus, sipping coffee in a café or just a call in the office, throughout the day we encounter several people listening to music or talking through earphones. There is nothing unusual in it, as earphones have made our life easier.
However, sometimes these remind me of hearing aids or ear machines used by people who are hard of hearing. How ironic that some people use such devices out of compulsion, while some do it as a hobby.
But while driving or walking on the road, it is quite dangerous to talk or enjoy music with earphones in your ear. Due to this, the sound of other vehicles running on the road does not reach the ear and there is every possibility of an accident. Increased use of earphones has been leading to a dramatic rise in in the number of road accidents as being reported in the newspapers every day.
When we are in a crowd and want to listen to something of our choice, we should listen by wearing earphones. However, by letting our earphones be plugged in too much, we might not be disturbing the people around us, but we certainly are harming ourselves enough without taking note of it.
Earphones produce sound waves that reach our ears, making the eardrum vibrate. This vibration spreads to the inner ear via the small bones and reaches the cochlea which is a chamber in the inner ear that is filled with a fluid and consists of thousands of small 'hairs'. When this vibration reaches the cochlea, the fluid vibrates making the hairs also move. The louder the sound, the stronger the vibrations and the more the hairs move.
The long-term exposure to loud music makes the hair cells eventually lose their sensitivity to vibration.
Earphones may affect our ears in the following 8 ways:
1. Hearing loss (including noise induced)
2. Dizziness
3. Ear infection
4. Excessive ear wax
5. Pain in the ears
6. Effect on the brain
7. Tinnitus (ringing or buzzing sound)
8. Hyperacusis (high sensitivity to normal sound)
The following 6 tips may help to prevent hearing damage from earphones:
1. Keep the volume and duration low
2. Make use of noise-cancelling headphones
3. Use over-the-ear-model
4. Regularly sanitize the headphones
5. Avoid using earphones in a noisy area
6. Adopt 60/60 rule (vol 60% and max 60 minutes)
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around a billion young people across the globe could be at the risk of hearing loss because of the unsafe listening habits, they practise through earphones.
Technology is the most necessary evil of our times and earphones or headphones are no exception.
The inventions of science are meant to make our life simple and easy. We just need to use them carefully.
--Kaushal Kishore
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