Smart technology can help protect our hearing
By Jeanine Botta, MPH, Co-founder, The Quiet Coalition
Photo credit: Fox
The On Health newsletter, a publication of academic medical center Houston Methodist, features an article encouraging people to reduce noise exposure across the lifespan, starting early in life to avoid cumulative harmful exposures. Author Karen Frayer recommends paying attention to alerts generated by smartphones and smartwatches that can detect decibel levels high enough to contribute to the development of noise-induced hearing loss. The article also provides guidance about other steps people can take to protect their hearing.
The newsletter doesn’t recommend one device over another, although the article is illustrated with an image of a woman looking at a phone, but a smartwatch alarm can be more accurate than a smartphone alarm because we tend to put our phones away. A 2022 article in Frontiers in Neurology reporting on the effectiveness of devices that monitor personal noise exposure explains that a phone in a pants pocket or handbag may not measure sound exposure as accurately as a device worn on the wrist because of an obstructed microphone opening.
Hearing loss is associated with difficulty communicating in a variety of environments, loneliness, social isolation and dementia. Hearing loss due to age does not have to be inevitable. The practice of using hearing protection on a regular basis will protect against noise-induced hearing loss, and can also help protect against the development of tinnitus and hyperacusis.
The On Health article also mentions early stem cell therapy research that may one day lead to treatments that can reverse certain forms of hearing loss or protect against noise exposure. But we already have the power protect our hearing health and reduce our chances of developing noise-induced hearing loss. Smart technology can help by alerting us to unsafe sound levels that we may not have been aware of, and we can make choices about sound levels when we use headphones to listen to music.
It is important to note that safe occupational noise exposure levels listed in the article are relatively high, and unlikely to be safe for the general public. See this proposed revision to recommendations for the occupational noise safe exposure level, published in 2024. The safe noise exposure levels for the public are lower than those for workers. There are also proposed recommendations for a safe noise level for the public and a safe noise exposure level to prevent noise-induced hearing loss.