Bob CollinsUniversity of Minnesota researchers have blown a hole in one of the basic assumptions of life: That loud music is destroying the hearing of young people.
According to a news release from the U today, researchers have determined that the amount of hearing loss in young people is much lower than previously reported:
“Most media have emphasized the link between exposure to loud sounds and hearing loss when referring to the JAMA study,” says Bert Schlauch, professor in the university’s Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences. “However, many of the findings of the JAMA study are not consistent with hearing loss caused by exposure to loud sounds.” These conclusions were drawn from an ongoing study of the hearing of the University of Minnesota Marching Band and a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research authored by Schlauch and Edward Carney.
The researchers studied the U’s marching band and initially found 15 percent had hearing loss. But by conducting other tests, it found nearly half of the original group didn’t lose their hearing and that the tests were false positives.
