The effects on hearing from shooting a 22LR out of a rifle?

Yup, its all good 'til someone gets an ear put out. That constant ringing in the ears is something that many of us suffer through, and as Chris B. said is torture when trying to sleep. I have had the blower on my furnace set to the ON position for years to have a little background noise at night. I wouldn't care if all types of hearing protection was the size of grapefruits and pink to boot, I'd still use it if I'd had known "way back when" what I know now.
 
Jayhawk,

Start here: http://www.freehearingtest.com/hia_gunfirenoise.shtml -- that provides a quick chart of gunfire noise measured in dB. As you point out, it doesn't give the test protocols or the distance, so we can probably assume they are all measured at the muzzle.

Next up: http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-distance.htm -- this one provides the math for figuring out the decibel reduction with distance. I am quite frankly not up to speed enough on math to do more than follow the basics, but there it is if you really need to do it the hard way from scratch.

One more: http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?id=2052 -- that's the one I should have started with. ;)

pax
 
What, what?

I'm not talking about "constant ringing" — Tinnitus. I'm talking about the recovery after exposure, that's a different thing entirely.
-SS-
 
I'm 31 and have been shooting since I was 5.

Back in those days, dad was not exactly "up to snuff" on hearing protection lol. I still remember not wanting to shoot the .410 cause of the ringing in the ears that followed. 20 and 12 were even worse.

But I would imagine that I've shot hundreds of thousands of 22LR without hearing protection on. Thousands and thousands and thousands of 12 gauge without hearing protection on.

But once I got into my twenties and started shooting revolvers, pistols, and centerfire rifles, hearing protection became mandatory.

Anyway, last time I got a hearing test, I passed with flying colors and the woman told me my hearing is so good, I can hear frequencies that 90% of humans can't. She said I must be part dog lmao.
 
At 85 decibels, human hearing is damaged. The little "pop" of the .22 L.R. is 134 db. Someone said: "If it doesn't cause my ears to ring..I don't bother with protection" ....Brother..if your ears are ringing..It ALREADY has caused damage!
 
We are missing one VERY important part of the equation. What is the platform that the .22LR is being shot out of? There is a huge difference in the sound that comes from my 6" 617 and the sound that comes from my bolt-action rifle with the 24" bbl.
 
Sorry but those car stereos are nothing compared to a rock concert at full stadium volume. Yes those car stereos are plenty loud and will obviously damage your hearing but if you take a full home (refrigerator) size, horn driven tweeter type, speaker and drive it with about 5000 watts then stack identical speakers up about 40 foot high and 40 feet wide and 15 feet deep and then do the same thing on the other side of the stage (about 200 such speakers in total) and you can quickly see just how loud a rock concert can be. Some have approached 150db. The typical, make your hair stand on end, car stereo can do about 135 db. But if you're one of the nuts who fill a mini-van with speakers and drive them with about 20,000 watts you can probably achieve about 175db inside the van. You will of course receive instant (and possibly total) hearing loss. I think ear drums pop at about 160db. I've been to rock concerts that were said to exceed 145 db and there idiots standing right beside one of those mountains of speakers. I sat and kept my ears covered until I couldn't stand it any more and I left. It was ZZ Top in Lexington, Kentucky BTW.

Measuring the sound level of a .22 and determining the damage of that sound level is beyond the current level of science when it comes to specific details. We all know that sub-sonic ammo is much quieter than hyper velocity ammo. And firing ammo from a pistol is much harder on your ears than firing from a rifle. Still repeated exposure to any loud sound (above 90db) is going to be damaging even if it's only short intervals of time like a bullet firing.

The loudest sounds I've encountered were not music related. The loudest sound I ever heard was an open high pressure gas line. Natural gas was shooting 200 feet in the air next to a pumping station where someone obviously made a mistake and opened a line that was under pressure. I was driving by and I couldn't get away because I had to cover my ears with my hands so I couldn't drive. I finally bit the bullet and drove away with the hand covering my ear away from the sound. I think I got permanent hearing damage that day but I would have never proved it. I stopped to turn back some kids who were heading in the direction of the sound from about 300 yards away. We were lucky the thing didn't explode and blow us all half a mile away. I've seen the results of a gas line explosion. It blew boulders as big as cars 3/4 of a mile. It blew out a hole about 50 foot wide and 30 feet deep all the way up a large hill. The explosion was seen 125 miles away.
 
Well, yeah, it can be pretty quiet if you shoot subsonics out of a LONG barrel. But now we are arguing special cases.

Wouldn't you agree, though, that it's a good idea to protect your hearing? How much is your hearing worth?
 
Like I said, I have very good hearing, and just yesterday killed 2 squirrels in heavily wooded, woods, with my Henry, and it wasn't loud at all.

Got a gray and a fox :)
 
Any sudden loud sound can/will have a deleterious effect on hearing.
Just because the damage is not as apparent compared to larger cartridges doesn't mean that damage doesn't happen with the .22.
 
Remember when you look at db numbers in the lists, an increase of 10 db means the noise DOUBLES.
Click to expand...

Not exactly.

The dB scale is also known as a "10 log" scale, which means that a coefficient of "decibels," divided by 10, is the exponent of 10 of the underlying sound energy. An increase of 10 decibels is a ten-fold increase in sound energy. It is generally accepted that 3 decibels (which is a doubling of sound energy is at the threshold of what most people will detect as a change, and 10 dB may be what most people would perceive as a doubling of "loudness," but it is far more than a doubling of sound energy.
 
That's what I thought, but I haven't taken an audiology class since 1973.

I was quoting the Au.D. who wrote the article at the link I posted. Maybe he made a typo.
 
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