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Smoking and Noise Team Up to Destroy Your Hearing

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

 In December of 2006 I wrote about smoking and hearing loss and pointed out that smoking in the presence of loud noise makes your ears even more susceptible to hearing loss than either smoking or loud noise alone.

Now, researchers have published the results of a study on workers in one manufacturing plant showing just how severely noise combined with smoking can affect hearing loss. Here are the shocking results. Workers who were exposed to noise above 85 dB and who smoked had an incidence of significant hearing loss 442% greater than those who worked in the same noisy environment but didn’t smoke.

The researchers next compared the incidence of workers who had hearing loss greater than 30 dB between 4000 Hz and 10,000 Hz in both ears. The incidence of hearing loss was only 11.2% in non-smokers, but was a whopping 49.5% in smokers.

When looking at these same workers, but just considering hearing loss greater than 25 dB at 4,000 Hz in their better ear, the results were even more pronounced. Non-smokers had an incidence of hearing loss of 18.4%, but that figure sky-rocketed to 63.6% in smokers.1

Therefore, if you value your hearing, you need to do two things. First, if you smoke, stop smoking. Second, wear ear protectors when around noise louder than about 80 dB for extended periods.

Note: smoking isn’t the only agent that has this synergistic effect when combined with loud noise. A number of drugs, chemicals (particularly the organic solvents) and heavy metals also have this property. “Ototoxic Drugs Exposed” (chapters 8 and 14) explains this in much more detail and lists the specific drugs, chemicals and heavy metals that have this nasty property.
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1 Extracted from “Interaction of smoking and occupational noise exposure on hearing loss: a cross-sectional study” Gholamreza Pouryaghoub, et. al. Dept of Occupational Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran published in BMC Public Health 2007, 7:137. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/137.

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Loop Systems

Loop your home or meeting room. Discover how you can hear wonderfully clear sound again when listening to the TV/radio, etc, or when listening to a speaker at a meeting.

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Take Control of Your Tinnitus—Here’s How

If your ears ring, buzz, chirp, hiss, click or roar, you know just how annoying tinnitus can be. You do not have to put up with this racket for the rest of your life. This book teaches you many things you can do to help bring your tinnitus under your control so it no longer bothers you.

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Sounds Now Too Loud for You?

Hypersensitive to Sound front coverIf some (or all) normal sounds seem so loud they “blow the top of your head off”, or make you wince or jump, or cause you headaches or ear pain, or affect your balance, or result in fear or annoyance of sounds so you feel you have to avoid these sounds, this book is for you!

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Hearing Phantom Sounds?

When hard of hearing people begin hearing phantom voices or music, they immediately worry they are going crazy. It never crosses their minds that they are sane and are just experiencing Musical Ear syndrome.

To learn more about the strange phantom sounds of Musical Ear syndrome and what you can do about them, click here to read a comprehensive article about Musical Ear Syndrome.

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Center for Hearing Loss Help

Neil G. Bauman, Ph.D.

1013 Ridgeway Drive, Lynden,
WA 98264-1057 USA

Email: neil@hearinglosshelp.com

Phone: 360-778-1266 (M-F 9:00 AM-5:00 PM PST)

© 2025 Center for Hearing Loss Help – Help for your hearing loss, tinnitus and other ear conditions

"The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life [which also includes perfect hearing] through Jesus Christ our Lord." [Romans 6:23]

"But know this, in the last days perilous times will come" [2 Timothy 3:1]. "For there will be famines, pestilences, and [severe] earthquakes in various places" [Matthew 24:7], "distress of nations, the sea and the waves roaring"—tsunamis, hurricanes—Luke 21:25, but this is good news if you have put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, for "when these things begin to happen, lift up your heads [and rejoice] because your redemption draws near" [Luke 21:28].