How does noise damage hearing?
Repeated exposure to excessive noise can kill hair cells and damage the hearing nerve making them unable to work properly, resulting in a permanent hearing loss. This is called a ‘sensorineural’ hearing loss. Someone with noise-induced hearing loss will first experience a difficulty hearing the high-pitched sounds that are important in being able to hear people talk. So although some sounds will remain reasonably clear – like people’s actual voices – the words they are saying will be distorted. For example, you may be watching a TV programme and be able to hear that the characters are talking, but what they are saying will be hard to understand. Naturally, this makes trying to understand a single person speaking in a noisy environment or among a babble of other voices very difficult and frustrating. However, it is possible to recognise signs of hearing damage quite early. If you have difficulty hearing people, or you suffer tinnitus (noises in the ear or head) on leaving a noisy enviro
