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This is just some of the noise that I'm exposed to.
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And that doesn't even include the progressive rock my neighbors listen to every single morning.
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All this noise is really annoying, but it's also killing my ears.
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Hearing loss is the fourth highest cause of disability across the world, and it's expected to get much worse.
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In the US alone, one in four adults show signs of noise-induced hearing loss.
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One of the main reasons behind that is all the noise that's around us every single day.
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According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the best way to protect your hearing is to limit noise levels to 70 decibels.
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And experts agree that continued exposure to noise above 85 dBA will eventually harm your hearing.
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If you're curious about the noise levels around you, decibel readers like this one tell you exactly how much noise you're being exposed to.
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This one's actually fine.
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I ride the subway for hours everyday and it's really, really loud.
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But putting in my headphones doesn't really help.
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Smartphones cranked (all the way) up are about 100 decibels.
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This bar is 105 decibels and according to the World Health Organization that could damage your hearing in less than an hour.
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This chart shows that the louder the noise, the less exposure it takes to potentially damage your hearing.
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For example, a boiler room is about 95 decibels, so if you hung out in one for 4 hours you would not only be a f***ing psycho, but you would expose yourself to hearing damage as well.
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One of the worst things about hearing loss is that ear damage is irreversible.
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Most of us are born with something like 16,000 little hair cells in our ears, and these hair cells act as sound detectors.
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So when sound waves pass into our ears, they send a signal up to our brain, and then our brain decodes the sound.
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But the brain's interpretation is only as good as the signal it receives from the ear.
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And when the hair cells in the ear have been damaged, the brain can't detect the sound or the sound is distorted.
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You can think about the hair cells like grass, when you're walking through a field and you walk over blades of grass, they bounce back after a few minutes.
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But when you walk through that field enough times you eventually create a path and the same thing happens with the hair cells in your ears.
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When loud sounds pass into the ears and at high enough intensity they bend those hair cells, and they can bounce back during a recovery period.
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But with enough noise over enough time those hair cells get permanently damaged or destroyed.
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When it comes to help from the government, I've got some good news and some bad news.
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The good news is that in the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon passed the Noise Control Act, which recognized Americans' right to a quiet environment.
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The bad news is that in 1981 President Ronald Reagan came along and essentially shut down the effort and left local governments to fend for themselves.
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The problem with that is that local governments relied on federal funding to tackle noise problems.
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So, yeah, you might be on your own on this one, but there are ways you can prevent noise induced hearing loss.
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You can wear noise canceling headphones or foam earplugs in loud environments like the subway or on airplanes.
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You can limit the amount of time you're exposed to loud sounds and move further away from the source of the noise.
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You can go into the settings and set a maximum volume on your phone to prevent playing your music too loud.
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So, yeah the problem is bad, but you don't have to take it lying down.
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One of my favorite discoveries had been this app called SoundPrint, which allows users to submit their decibel readings in bars, restaurants, and cafes.
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And I've been using it to avoid really loud places.