Protect Ears Against Hearing Loss

40 Assorted Noises and Their Decibel Level

Did you know that mathematics would be part of learning about hearing loss and noise? Unfortunately, decibels are a unit of measure on a logarithmic scale. What does this mean? If you compared the sound of a jet engine to that of a rustling leaf, you would need to keep track of a lot of zeros!

Here is why. To compare one sound against another, you can use the sound intensity ratio. This is how you would compare sounds on a one-to-one basis. A rustling leaf produces a sound intensity of about 10. A jet engine produces a sound intensity of 100,000,000,000,000! That's 100 trillion!!!

If you use decibels, you can get rid of the zeros at the high end of the scale. Our leaf produces a noise level of 10 decibels, believe it or not. But by using a logarithmic scale, the same jet engine noise is 140 decibels. The logarithmic scale for decibels means that for each increase in decibels by 10, the actual sound intensity has increased ten times.

Let's think of it in another fashion. Say you have a 60 decibel noise. That might be the noise created by ordinary conversation between two people. Two other people start talking right next to you and your friend. Does that mean you have 120 decibels? No. The actual decibel level of the four people talking at the same time would be about 63 decibels.

The truth about noise - in my opinion - is that you generally know when something is loud. If you have to raise your voice to be heard, you are very near the risk zone. If you have to shout to be heard, you could well be in the danger or harmful range. People who already have hearing loss are in the greatest danger. Since loud noise to them sounds like regular noise! That is why you need to wear hearing protection. You don't want to get cumulative hearing damage over a period of time like me.

Note the decibel levels below. Any noise above 85 decibels puts you in the risk zone. Noises above 115 decibels puts you in the harmful range. At 140 decibels and above, you should be experiencing pain.

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