Are you deaf? What?!

I went to see Black Label Society the other night with my girlfriend and friends. Now as I have mentioned in previous blogs I’m in a band and therefore around loud music a lot of the time. When around these noisy atmospheres I always have ear plugs. SO for the last 2-3 years I’ve never been fully exposed to the full volume of live music.

Well I had forgotten my ear plugs on this occasion. There are two reasons I wear ear plugs. One is the ringing in the ears after gigs, I can’t sleep with that ringing and then the only way to get rid of it is to play something louder. Two, after the last gig I didn’t have ear plugs in the next morning I had a lecture at college about ear damage which scared me.

Now it all comes down to how long your ears can cope with load sounds. Sound is measured in dB.

As you may know, the maximum exposure time for unprotected ears per day is 8 hours at 90 dB according to The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) guidelines. For every 5 dB increase in volume, the maximum exposure time is cut in half.
95 dB - 4 hours
100 dB - 2 hours
110 dB - 30 minutes
120 dB 7.5 minutes
Many hearing professionals believe that these permissible levels are still too high for hearing safety.

No I have an app on my iphone which reads dB, and at the concert I measured the sound levels and it peaked at 100 dB, and I’m shore there were points where it went higher. So at a 100 dB you can stand 2 hours but the professionals believe that’s still too much, and you’ll be at a concert for 3 to 4 hours on average.

Now I get called a wimp for wearing ear plugs, but I feel if you’re a real music fan you should want to want to listen to music for the rest of your life. This will not happen if you don’t wear ear plugs at live music events. You will either lose your hearing or it will go the other way and it will become over sensitive with will leave you with painful ears even from just being in a crowded pub.

I found that night that I must be so used to ear plugs that 100dB was painful to me. I could not hear what song was actually playing at all. I had to leave the arena to the upstairs bar and get ear plugs. Even at this point I could not hear all that much over the hissing that had already formed in my ears.

I urge all you music goers, wear ear plugs, most music venues supply them for free, but you can buy re-useable ones. I use www.earplugs.co.uk.