From the Editor: Why you should wear earplugs at the next concert you attend
Art by @RESLUS
It’s the weekend and you just attended a concert. Your voice slightly cracks when talking from shouting too loud and your ears are ringing from the loud music you enjoyed with other people.
As you head home, you don’t think much about it as you feel great. But when you wake up, you still hear the ringing in your ears. The ringing stops after a few days and everything turns back to normal, but what happens when you do this for years?
I have been attending concerts since I was nine, and I didn’t really think about protecting my ears as the ringing would stop after a few days at most. But this changed when I attended a rock concert two years ago with my friend.
The music was so loud that it felt like my ears were plugged and I started to feel pain in my neck. Afterwards, I was worried as I had never experienced this before. I had constant ringing in my ears for the following five days.
I’m incredibly thankful nothing worse happened and I didn’t lose my hearing, but it’s a reminder that sometimes we take our hearing for granted and it’s vital to protect your ears at concerts or other loud settings.
It is common for people to not wear ear protection at concerts. According to a poll conducted by EDM.com, 49 per cent of music festival attendees don’t wear hearing protection. One of the reported reasons is that earplugs diminish the overall music experience, making it sound muffled or distorting the sound.
While earplugs slightly change the experience of listening to your favourite artist live, they don’t diminish the overall experience, and it’s better to protect your ears and enjoy more concerts over time than to cut them short.
Sounds under 70 decibels (dBA) are usually safe, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIH). A normal conversation is between 60 to 70 dBA, and a concert is on average 100 to 105 dBA.
Slightly muffled or ringing in your ears may seem harmless, but it can actually cause more damage than you realize. It can only take one loud exposure or sound over time to cause gradual hearing loss or tinnitus, which is constant ringing in your ears.
Hearing loss or damage happens when hair cells in your ears are damaged or destroyed, according to the CDC. On average, each person is born with 16,000 hair cells in their cochlea, the part of the inner ear that helps with hearing.
When someone attends a concert or loud event without earplugs, their hearing feels muffled or different than before because the hairs bend more if the sound is louder and become straight when they have recovered. However, if a person has constant exposure to loud noise, the hair cells can die and cannot be replaced.
Hearing loss can be gradual, which is why it’s important to protect your ears as best as you can. I feel there is still a taboo of wearing earplugs, as when I attend concerts, I still see many people who don’t.
When we’re younger, sometimes we take our senses for granted and don’t realize how valuable they are until something happens or we lose them.
I have worn earplugs ever since that concert, and I encourage others to do the same. Some people have laughed at me for wearing them, but it doesn’t stop me from doing so as there’s more pros than cons.
Enjoy the music, sing your heart out, and dance at concerts — but protect your ears if you go to loud events often. You never know how much it can save you in the long run.
