Noise and Hearing (was Re: [rescue] Re: Throw another packet on the server...)

[N.Miller]

On Friday, August 22, 2003, at 09:10 AM, J. Alexander Jacocks wrote:
> I dunno about y'all, but I'm half-deaf as it is.  I suspect my years 
> of living in server farms haven't helped any.
>
> All kidding aside, I've lost about 15% of my hearing in my left ear 
> and 30% in my right, likely due to machine noise.  To make things 
> worse, my weekend
> hobby is racing cars.  I think that as the years go by, there will be 
> more
> and more people like me in our profession/hobby.
>
> I'm not sure what can be done about this, though.  C'est la vie, I 
> suppose.

Wearing hearing protection might be a good start!

Foam ear plugs, silicon ear plugs (custom or not), or ear muffs aka
"mickey mouse ears" will all protect your hearing (any reduction is
good reduction).  You can get all of these with circuitry so you
can hear normal voices and but have them cut out the higher db
noises.  The latter are not cheap, but are 100% tax deductible if
you require them for work and your employer will not pay for it.

You can get custom-made silicon ear plugs in the US for about
$50-100 if you go to an ear mold technician rather than an
audiologist (they usu. charge ~$200).  These ear plugs are
made to fit only you, and are usually lost before they wear
out, and are just as good as those made by audiologists.

I wear ear plugs:  shooting firearms, going to music concerts or
clubs, riding my motorcyle (and I wear a full-face helmet), running
the vacuum cleaner, using the lawn mower, weed eater, or any other
power tool...

People think hearing deteriorates because of age but that's not
the case.  Hearing deterioration is 100% because of environmental
noise unless you have some biological problem (disease, damage,
etc).  Hearing tests on people who live in remote places with no
automation show that children and grandparents have the same
hearing response averages.

Yeah, I'm kind of a militant about this...I *hate* excessive
noise...always have.

Would you expose your eyes to something that might make you
partially blind as a cumulative effect?

=Nadine=