Thread: Hearing

After being a silly bugger in my younger days (still in my young days you are saying!) with target and bunny shooting and time spent playing soldiers, I have sustained some pretty serious hearing damage for someone my age. The damage is mostly in my right ear, naturally.

I vaguely remember a lecture early in my army career about hearing protection and the effects of sound on our hearing. The man explained to us that the ringing we get in our ears is in fact the small hairs 'dying' as a result of sound abuse. This past month I have noticed a lot of ear-ringing and from time to time have difficultly identifying where sounds are coming from (what direction) and even tonight not even hearing something my partner has heard quite clearly.

Does anyone else here suffer from hearing loss? What have you done about it? There are the obvious tactics to reduce the effects of loud sounds on our ears like ear muffs and plugs and just turning the radio down, but do you have any other ideas to protect your ears and prevent hearing loss? Sometimes the nature of our work means long exposure to medium level sounds that can actually damage our hearing in the same way that a loud event can in a small space of time.

Does anyone else get this horrible ringing? What about the hair dying thing - does this sound familiar? I also remember some myth (prove me wrong!) that the ringing you hear is the last time those hairs will 'hear' the frequency of that noise before they become completely useless.

I would be interest to hear your thoughts (pun not indended!) as sometimes hearing safety isn't something we naturally think about as firearms safety.