Is it safe to wear earbuds while sleeping?

by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition

Photo credit: Ketut Subiyanto

Is it safe to wear earbuds while sleeping? That was the question someone asked The New York Times’ Ask Well column.* 

In a word, “No!” One might as well ask, “Is it safe to smoke in bed?”  There are two main reasons it probably isn’t safe to wear earbuds while sleeping. The first set of reasons has to do with ear hygiene, with occlusion of the external auditory canal increasing the risk of ear infections and wax buildup. The second set of reasons has to do with auditory health. If someone is using earbuds to listen to music or calming sounds like waves breaking on the shore as a sleep aid or to mask noise, the sound output may be great enough to cause auditory damage. Normal sleep occurs in quiet. Using earbuds puts the sound directly into the ear, adding to the daily noise dose in ways not intended when studies of how noise affects the ear were done decades ago.

The Ask Well column contains a dangerous misstatement: “Listening to sounds at 80 decibels - such as a noisy restaurant or loud music playing through headphones - for more than 40 hours per week can damage your hearing.” That statement is technically correct, but the actual safe noise exposure level to prevent noise-induced hearing loss may be as low as 55 A-weighted decibels (dBA**) for a single noise event, and a daily average of only 50-60 decibels for 24 hours. 

Ask Well suggests alternatives such as headbands with integrated speakers or flat speakers that fit inside a pillowcase which appear to be much safer.

*The Quiet Coalition usually does not write about articles behind paywalls. This article may be behind a paywall, but due to the importance of the topic and the large paid circulation of The New York Times, we are making an exception.

**A-weighting adjusts unweighted sound measurements to reflect the frequencies heard in human speech.