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04/05/2010

Environmental Health Officer Davie Walkes was on hand to advise students

Representatives from Crawley Borough Council's Environmental Health Division spent a day at the Crawley campus this week, to highlight the long-term damage that can be caused by listening to music that exceeds the maximum recommended noise level.

The event, which took place 29 April as part of national Noise Action Week, which raises awareness of the dangers of excessive noise, and aims to promote a responsible attitude towards it. Environmental Health Officers Brian Cox and Davie Walkes, spent the day inviting students who regularly listen to music through personal headphones to get their decibel level checked at their purpose-built stand in Middle Block stairwell and the results were not for the faint hearted!

Whilst some students had their volume at a level well within the recommended level, clocking up a modest 80 decibels, others were in real danger of permanently damaging their hearing, through regularly exposing their ears to noise levels which were off the scale. Of the 85 tested, only a quarter were listening to music at a safe level. Out of the others 20 were listening to levels that could cause hearing damage if listened to for more than an hour every day. More worryingly 29 students, close to a third of those tested, were listening to music at more than 100 decibels, with three exceeding 115 decibels - louder than most night clubs - which is very likely to result in hearing damage by their early 20s. Some of the students tested had already begun experiencing hearing problems such as tinnitus.

Brian Cox, Senior Environmental Health Officer at Crawley Borough Council, said "To demonstrate noise-induced hearing loss, students were played examples of music and conversations that had been acoustically adjusted to represent how a person suffering from noise induced hearing damage would hear them. This helped many of the students to actually experience how their future world may sound and the numerous problems this could create in their life. Using the measuring equipment the officers helped the students find a level on their music players which was safer and unlikely to cause them hearing damage."