Hearing protection vs. hearing damage

I have tinnitus from my years in the military and I wore double hearing protection (plugs and muffs) on the range, but when I went to war (iraq, afghanistan, etc....) there was no time to call time out so you could put your muffs or plugs on.
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ditto-


I was in afghan too a few years ago. I wore ear pro on the range, but when RPG's come screaming out of the mountains, you can't call time out to put your ear plugs in. I bought a pair of Surefire plugs that still allow you to hear, but keep out gunshot noise, and can be converted to standard plugs by using an attached stopper. I will take many pairs on my next middle eastern adventure.
 
Just turned 40 and have had a VERY constant noticable ringing in my ears for MUCH more than 10 years. Sadly I see it as too late to worry about MY hearing. As a father I have also failed a bit by not insisting my kids wear protection (they better not make me a premature grand parent however) since I can't seem to get past the do as I say not as I do thing. I have told them the risks of hearing loss and of the incessant distraction and battle to fall asleep with the ringing.
I have done many things to destroy my hearing above and beyond gunfire.
Building and riding souped up open pipe harleys. Riding 2 stroke dirt bikes. Wrenching on top fuel grade engines with zoomie pipes blasting in my un-protected ears. One thing I noticed is that the pitch plays as much or more a role as decible of volume. Some of them motors would reach in deep and tickle my ears all the way to my throat while others thumped... The "ticklers" seemed far harder on me. Metal shop work also played a big part too. But I also know that hundreds of thousands of various rounds of gunfire have had their costs too.
Brent
 
Interpreter needed.

The only time that I did not need my wife to "interpret" in a movie theater because I could not hear all the dialog was when I used the headset offered for the hearing impaired.

The only way I can understand all the dialog on T.V. is to have it very loud, have my wife interpret, or wear a headset.

The Dr.s have told me that I have lost at least 50% of the 5,000 cycles per second range in both ears.

Despite hear loss from gunfire being a myth, I now wear soft earplugs, with shooting muffs over the top of them for all my shooting.

I am 65 years old but my hearing was already gone by 25 years old.
 
ouch...

thanks for the info.. shot my pt140 1 time with out plugs..
never again...
3 hours later.. my head still hurts.. i still have rings in my ears..

WHAT!!!! WHAT!!!!
 
Any time your ears ring after a loud noise it's indicative of damage to your ears. Generally speaking that damage is permanent. Your brain will compensate to the extent that it is able which usually means that you won't notice the hearing loss without a test until it has progressed to the point that it is severe.
 
This should be posted in every range in America

May I suggest this information be somehow posted to all the other forums on this excellent site? This understanding is as vital to the "safe handling" of firearms as any of the other rules we are taught and live by.

This explains a lot, including some hearing loss I sustained learning to shoot outdoors with a 357S&W a very long time ago with just a little tissue tucked into my ears.
 
Good thread.

I work in Acoustics and have done so for about eight (8) years now. There is an SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Technical Paper I will send to any who PM me their e-mail that deals with Firearm exposure and Hearing Loss. Very interesting document. The crux: IMPULSIVE noises are far more damaging to ears than constant tone, non-impulsive noise sources. The human ear filters the sound (we call it A-weighting) in which the freuencies at 5kHz are accentuated. Exposure to gunfire will reduce the ear's sensitivity here.

PM me.
 
Chui, I tried to PM you but was not succesfull.
Could you please send a copy of the SAE paper to my Email address NukemJim (at) Yahoo.com

Thank you

NukemJim
 
For that reason, I always double-plug at the range: headset over plugs. I no longer trust one method to fully do the job.
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I always got my ears on when shooting. I used to do one or the other...now both simultaneously. Only way to go and decreases 45db or more depending on earmuff make.
 
From JohnKSA:
Any time your ears ring after a loud noise it's indicative of damage to your ears. Generally speaking that damage is permanent. Your brain will compensate to the extent that it is able which usually means that you won't notice the hearing loss without a test until it has progressed to the point that it is severe.
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Everyone should head that!

Let me share a recent experience. A couple of months ago I happened to awake with a loud ringing and very little hearing in my left ("good") ear. I initially thought it was eustachian congestion, but when it didn't clear p right away I went to the ENT specialist. Diagnosis: sudden, severe, idiosyncratic, neurological hearing loss. Means it's nerve-based and they don't know what caused it. No way to test. I was put on a week's regiment of steroids and my hearing returned.

Now, that's not gun related, but it relates to the general subject of this thread, and here's why it's important: Had I not gone in to the specialist within a few hours, the damage would have been irreversible. After four days max., no improvement at all would have been possible.

Had I been traveling, and not knowing the risk, I would be essentially deaf in my left ear.

My right one is significantly impaired due to permanent noise-induced hearing loss--gunfire without protection. Why it was affected more than the left ear is not clear.

I hope this proves helpful.
 
I learned too late about loud noise. Too much muzzle blast, too much around explosives. Left ear drum gone. Corneas damaged. Squeaks and squeals in my head. Like it is said, "If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd taken better care of myself." Ear/eye protection use can't be stressed enough.
 
Oldmarksman, it sounds like you were pretty lucky -- and smart to get to the doc right away.

My right one is significantly impaired due to permanent noise-induced hearing loss--gunfire without protection. Why it was affected more than the left ear is not clear.
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This is a pretty typical pattern of hearing loss for shooters: if you were shooting long guns, and you're right-handed, the reason you have more hearing loss in your right ear is that your head blocks a lot of the acoustic energy, especially at higher frequencies, so the sound is less intense when it reaches your left ear.

FYI, the technical term for this is "head shadow," and it also plays a role in the ability to locate the source of a sound -- this relies on differences in both time and intensity at the two ears.
 
okay, sorry-but I got bored with the db reduction arguments and skipped to the end.

Just going to share my years of experience and current practices.

My ears ring all the time--I can still hear a squirrel fart at 200 yards, but it's amidst a permanent ringing. Most of my hearing damage was done with rock concerts/bar performances and gunfire. The SINGLE most damaging event was firing a slug round through a Cutt's Compensator w/o protection. It was memorable--and way worse than a 4" 357-don't ask how I know. The Cutt's incident was like this-- BOO....I didn't hear the "M" all sound ceased to exist for several seconds and then a ringing started way off in the distance. The ringing got louder and louder and eventually other sounds started to be heard again. NO thing has rattled my head like that one.

I wear protection for all gunfire except long-gun rimfire and hunting. I also wear protection for weedwhacking, chainsawing, shop tools, lawn mowing, sporting events (Titans Football), motorsport--etc. A coach/referee type whistle makes my ears ring louder when I blow it. I can clap my hands and make my ears ring (louder).

The only time I've tried to hunt with protection is when using centerfire short arms.

Probably average three unprotected shots per year from big guns while deer hunting. And that's just damage I'll have to deal with.

Hearing is not like eyesight. Medicine does not yet understand how to correct the damage. Best practice is to protect it at EVERY OPPORTUNITY. You may live longer than you thought.:cool:

I'm 42.

And if you want the best protection available, you have to have plugs made to fit your ears. They're not that much-and are quite effective. I may look into that.
 
Probably average three unprotected shots per year from big guns while deer hunting. And that's just damage I'll have to deal with.
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Buy a high-quality set of electronic muffs. They will actually give you BETTER than normal hearing because you can turn the volume up. They'll amplify normal levels of sound but block any damaging levels of sounds. The good ones are designed so that you can still locate sounds normally by turning your head, etc.

They're not cheap, but once you price hearing aids your idea of what is cheap will change dramatically!
 
*** EDIT: whoops... just saw on page 2 of this that it's been brought up already... I would wonder, though, if some helmets could be constructed with active hearing protection (i.e. the electronic muff dealios) ***

This thread has got me thinking...

What does the military do to protect the hearing of the troops? I can't recall any war movie, past or present, that showed the troops with hearing protection. I imagine someone operating a 50 cal gun on the top of a humvee must be absorbing an awful lot of noise.

What am I missing here? While I can understand that most cops wouldn't walk around with earplugs or muffs on on the off chance they'd be using their weapons, the same is obviously not true of someone in a military combat zone.
 
This is very good information that those of you that are younger should take this information to heart and read it closely.
My hearing was damaged in the 70’s when I was in the NAVY working on P3 aircraft. The big 4 engine turbo prop aircraft had an auxiliary power unit that was a 300 horse power turbine that powered the aircraft on the ground.
Two of us were working on an antenna that was just aft of the front main mount when the hearing protection (Mickey Mouse ears) that I was wearing were knocked off. Only for several seconds and to this day I can still hear the turbine engine in my left ear.
I have a constant ringing in that ear.
Hearing damage is something you don’t want to experience, it gets worse as time goes by and is also accumulative.
Now even when mowing I wear hearing protection.
The one thing I don’t want to end up with is no hearing when I turn 60, which is only a few years away.
So my suggestion to you, wear hearing protection all the time your around any engines like mowers and especially two stroke motors.
Guns?
If you shoot without hearing protection,,,,, you will be able to join my club.
The constant ringing club,,,,, and no I never got any money from a disability.
 
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