Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, about the damage done by pollution, “is widely credited with launching the environmental movement in the West” (Wikipedia). Along similar but narrower lines, last week’s USA Today had an article by Joyce Cohen about hearing damage caused by being in a marching band. It begins:
There’s no bigger booster of his marching band than Mark Claffey. “I am a total band nerd!” declares Claffey, a drummer for the Golden Falcons at Franklin Heights High School in Columbus, Ohio.
There’s just one downside. At age 17, he has painful ear damage.
He says that, after indoor rehearsals, his ears started hurting, then ringing.
Now, he’s abnormally sensitive to sound. If someone cranks the car radio, “I get a sharp shooting pain in my right ear,” says Claffey. . . .
It’s the dirty little secret of the halftime show: Marching band . . . can cause irreparable hearing damage, according to Brian Fligor, director of diagnostic audiology at Children’s Hospital in Boston.
The director of a professional group of music teachers claimed that knowledge of this problem is fairly new. That’s absurd, Joyce said. Stories about hearing problems among musicians have been published in medical and professional journals for at least two decades. Music teachers don’t acknowledge their own hearing problems, several experts told her, because doing so could endanger their livelihoods. Band parents, known for their fanaticism, were sometimes dismissive. They claimed that pain and ringing in the ears are normal.
The Indianapolis Star, published by Gannett, which also owns USA Today, reprinted the article. On the newspaper’s forums, readers started a debate about whether there should be laws to protect students’ hearing.
When I was in middle school (late 70′s/early 80′s), my band (not marching) teacher commented that drummers were always deaf. Her husband was a drummer.
I totally agree with this; there ought to be more awareness of what it does to kids hearing.
When I played in band in high school a few times as a bassist, I always tried to wear earplugs during rehearsal or performance because it actually felt physically painful, it was so loud. My years of orchestral playing hadn’t conditioned my ears to be used to it.
I had no idea how they could tolerate it; some of the kids have the bells of the brass instruments pointed directly at their ears.
Pearl, years of playing don’t toughen up your ears. It’s not possible to condition yourself to withstand noise. If anything, that orchestral playing made your ears more susceptible, not less.
Noise exposure causes damage that is cumulative, irreversible and untreatable.
I had gained the impression that it was possible, sustaining years of exposure to noise, to develop a tolerance for noise levels. After repeatedly being exposed to a certain level of sound at a certain frequency, the part of your ear that receives that sound gets damaged and needs a stronger volume. It’s why we lose our hearing and need people to shout at us as we get older, if I’m not mistaken.
Using a personal example, I once determined I was building a tolerance to noise when I noticed that I kept turning my Walkman up higher and higher as an adolescent. I needed to turn it up to maximum level 10 to get the same satisfaction I once got from level 5.
I’ve known several musicians who could tolerate higher noise levels than I could; orchestral playing for a string section member has a far lower deicbel level because we aren’t in close contact with the noisemakers, namely brass and percussion.
I suppose hearing loss due to aging would not be quite the same as losing it to noise exposure, but perhaps could be a factor, I should have said.
Good luck trying to sell safe sax.
Well, I am the Mark Claffey interviewed in this article. My hearing isn’t really damaged, I just have an abnormal sensitivity to loud and high pitched sounds. Drumming over 2 or 3 years without earplugs has caused a ringing in my right ear. I now wear ear plugs to prevent any further damage in my ears. Thankfully marching band is coming to an end, which means putting away the loud marching drums, and bringing out some of the quiter, (not really), drums. I plan to go into college for music, and plan to wear earplugs when I am practicing. Anyone interested in talking to me about hearing loss from marching band please e-mail me at mclaffey12489@yahoo.com.