This weekend our staff is celebrating BHSM with an awareness campaign at the Northwest Folklife Festival Vera Stage. Over the next four day we plan to hand out over 3,000 earplugs to festival-goers and teach them the importance of “turning it down.” The importance of protecting your hearing, especially during concerts, has been getting a lot of press lately due to a new research study that tested teens’ hearing before and after attending a rock concert found that 72 percent of them experienced some hearing loss.
The concert used for the test featured a popular female vocalist, not a heavy metal rock band normally associated with deafening decibels. The hearing loss was expected to be temporary, however it is the cumulative effect that causes permanent damage.
The study is bringing awareness to the damage single exposure can cause. Noises over 85 decibels (dB) cause damage to the tiny hair cells within the inner ear and with each loud exposure the chances of irreversible damage increase!
We look forward to increasing awareness of hearing protection this weekend! We hope you can drop by and say hi if you are in the area!