Don’t Let Noise Insidiously Steal Your Precious Hearing
© April 2026 by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
Over the years I have been asked a lot of questions regarding noise exposure and how it relates to hearing loss. Most people know that you need to protect your ears from loud sounds if you want to preserve your hearing over your lifetime. However, there is a lot of confusion about just how much sound exposure is safe for your ears and at what level sounds begin to cause hearing loss.
For example, a young man asked me, “What is the safe range of sounds for human ears? How long can a person be in a dangerous range before damage occurs? Are we talking about hours, minutes or just seconds?”
In a similar vein, a hard-of-hearing person wanted to know, “How much noise can my ears stand without causing additional hearing loss? Should I wear ear protectors when I am around noise or not?”
Another person wanted to know why he was still losing more of his hearing even though he was following the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations regarding wearing hearing protection.
Yet another puzzled person explained, “While doing research, I have found that many websites have different views on safe exposure times regarding loud sounds. Some web sites say that you should not be exposed to noises that exceed 80 dB for more than 8 hours, others say 85 dB and some say 90 dB. I don’t know which one is right.” Then he asked me, “Do you have a reliable safe-exposure time-table?”
These are all excellent questions and reflect the lack of knowledge and high degree of confusion concerning louder sounds causing hearing loss and what we can do to protect our precious hearing from the ravages of noise.
Like the people mentioned above, are you also wondering whether you have been allowing noise to slowly and insidiously steal your hearing without your being aware of it?
Dr. Neil has put together a free, comprehensive 40-page Special Report to answer these and other questions and reveal how noise is damaging your ears and what you can do about it.
Download this special report (in pdf format) and read it at your leisure, refer to the tables on safe noise time-weighted average intensity tables, or print it out for your reference.
When you put into practice the principles this report reveals, you can prevent further erosion of your hearing from noise and its nefarious “partners” and thus enjoy the hearing you have now for the rest of your life.
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