Abstract
The paper presents results of hearing loss measurements provided for 81
young people (from 16 to 25 years old). The main aim of the work was to
find the influence of headphones of the types used (closed, semi-open,
open and in-ear) on the hearing losses. The first part of the research was
to answer questions about the influence of: time of listening, loudness of
music, other noise exposures as well as the type of the headphones used.
It turned out that all factors mentioned above influence thresholds of
hearing but the found dependencies are not explicit. The greatest hearing
losses were observed for people who work as sound reinforcement engineers
and, moreover, no influence of the headphone types was found for them. It
turned out that the use of in-ear headphones causes the greatest hearing
losses for some subjects (thresholds shifted up to about 20 dB HL at 4
kHz). The daily time of a listening also affected the hearing thresholds.
It was found that for users of in-ear and close headphones, an average
time of musical exposure of three hours causes the hearing loss of 10-15
dB HL at higher frequencies. The use of open as well as semi-open
headphones has no influence on the hearing damage. Thus it would be stated
that these kinds are safety in use. Almost 15% of the investigated young
people have their thresholds shifted up at higher frequencies,
particularly at 4 kHz, which means that they have the first symptoms of a
permanent hearing damage.
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