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1. Here’s some background information (mostly from San Francisco nightclubs, the study was done in 2000, and the full article can be found at http://www.hearnet.com/features/art...e_EdWclub.shtml .
The Bay Area Reporter newspaper tested the decibel levels of a dozen of The City's clubs and found their noise levels so extreme, they not only violate your hearing, they violate the law. The paper's survey found the loudest club in San Francisco, the Sound Factory, was also its most popular. It belted out music as high as 115 decibels. That's louder than sandblasting. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), you should limit your time in the Sound Factory to 4 minutes and 43 seconds. All the clubs surveyed were in violation of the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (CAL-OSHA) laws governing noise in the workplace. CAL-OSHA told the Bay Area Reporter it doesn't have the resources to routinely monitor the clubs. Some of the clubs surveyed were so loud, NIOSH says its workers should wear both earplugs and earmuffs. There are virtually no regulations in place to protect the clubs' customers from noise.
The survey found clubgoers are routinely exposed to levels that could result in non-reversible hearing loss, permanent ringing in the ear (tinnitus), or a condition called hyperacusis which paradoxically causes the afflicted to be overly sensitive to noise. The loudest club in the study was not a gay club but the very popular and Sound Factory, which advertises in its flyers: "You'll hear it ... before you see it!" The SOMA club at the foot of the Bay Bridge more than lived up to its billing with music pounding out of its speakers at 115 decibels (dB). The Federal government says levels over 85 dB are dangerous. A vacuum cleaner runs about 70 dB, a jackhammer at 100 dB, and sandblasting about 110 dB. Each increase of 10 decibels represents a doubling of the perceived sound. So the Sound Factory's peak of 115 dB is significantly louder than sandblasting. If a hostile government conspired to destroy the hearing of America's young people, it would be hard pressed to come up with a better formula than the typical dance club.
For Mikel Scott, ringing in the ears after leaving a dance club was not temporary. Scott, 36, is a New York-based flight attendant who frequents San Francisco gay dance clubs on his weekly stopovers. For the past six years, Scott has suffered from tinnitus. The ringing in his ears never stops. "It's constant," says Scott. "It's the worst when it's quiet because all I can hear is the ringing." Scott says he got tinnitus one evening after dancing too close to the speakers at an Atlanta dance club. "My ears were ringing when I left the club that night and it's never stopped"
Kanani Cruz, 34, says she used to go to clubs at least once a week. Now she goes about three times a month. Cruz says the noise is so extreme that she "can't hear shit" when she leaves often gets headaches and ringing in the ears following her club attendance.
Julie Macias, 28, attributes a steady loss in her hearing to regular clubgoing. "When I leave the clubs, my ears ring all night till the morning," says Macias. "I've had to wear a special headset at work to boost the sound so I can hear the callers and I've learned to lip read."
One night in particular I was DJing in a club where the sound system was particularly loud, that night I went home with a ringing sensation so bad that it took my ears several days to get back to normal. In one ear, the ringing has never completely stopped. Nowadays I am very sensitive to loud music (particularly high / treble frequencies) and the mild tinnitus I have normally increases dramatically if I expose myself to loud music. This can cause some problems for me as I work in a recording studio. I very rarely DJ these days, but if I do I am careful to wear earplugs. I would like to see more responsibility placed on nightclub owners and sound equipment manufacturers/installers to ensure that sound systems are designed and set up to minimize the risk of hearing damage to clubbers. Simon (24) is from Cheshire and works as a sound designer and composer (www.dontlosethemusic.com)
Alice's story.... Since I was 16 I have been going out almost every Friday and Saturday night. The music in the clubs I used to go to in Sheffield was really loud so loud in fact that you couldnt hear people talking (or shouting) above the music. The first time I went out, I remember going home in a taxi and not being able to hear properly. Over time this got worse, so that my hearing wouldnt return to normal for a couple of days. Now I'm 20 I have a permanent mild hearing loss and a mild ringing sensation in my ears all the time. Surely the musicians and bands want us to be able to enjoy the music both now and in the future? If thats the case they should tell the fans how best to protect their hearing in the long term. (www.dontlosethemusic.com)
Kathy Peck, CO-founder of the San Francisco based "Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers" targets her educational efforts towards young people who think hearing loss is something that happens much later in life. "It needs to be taken seriously, too many people think that hearing loss is old age, and it's not." She was recently contacted by an audiologist from Alaska concerned about children who suffered hearing loss from blasting the volume on their portable stereo headphones. The audiologist was worried because the children couldn't hear bears walking in the snow. "They were afraid their lives were threatened," says Peck. A University of Florida study backed up that concern. It found that 17% of adolescents are already suffering from some degree of hearing loss.
Pete Avila, 34, is a DJ with 14 years experience spinning in the Bay Area and is one of the country's most influential and innovative DJs. He has the classic symptoms of noise-induced hearing loss. Avila has difficulty hearing conversations when there's background noise. "When there's a busy restaurant with a lot of noise, it's hard for me to hear someone who's sitting right across from me," he says. He sometimes misunderstands words and has to turn up the TV louder than most people. Avila wears earplugs when he's on the dance floor but not while he's working. "It's difficult, because when you are in the club situation and in the moment, you sort of want the music loud to feel what people are feeling on the dance floor," he says. Avila was music director at the Sound Factory for four years and concedes "it took a toll on my ears." Over the years, Avila has worked at virtually every dance club in San Francisco. He says no club owner ever expressed concern about the hearing health of its workers or patrons.
"The deejays suffer incredibly," says San Francisco dance music producer Tyler Stone. "I've worked in the studio with a lot of deejays and these people need to really crank the volume to levels that are unbelievable to me." There's "incredible denial" about the problem, Stone said. "Quite honestly, I don't think there's any awareness in the club scene.”
The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) recently launched a club noise awareness campaign in Great Britain after a RNID survey found that 62% of regular clubbers have symptoms of hearing loss. RNID reports that the numbers of young people exposed to dangerous noise levels has tripled since the early 80's. It also found that tinnitus rates among young people have increased three fold during that same time period. "We are roller-coasting towards an epidemic of hearing loss in middle rather than older age," says RHID's Chief Executive James Strachan.
Why don't the clubs turn the volume down? Club owners say they are giving you what you want. If you think it's too loud, let them know. It's a free country, no one's forcing anyone to go in the clubs, if people want to listen to music that loud and employees want to work in clubs around music so loud, why should anyone tell them they can't? Labor laws don't allow employers to subject employees to unnecessary and dangerous environmental conditions, period. As a business customer, you are protected from just about every other environmental risk. For example, a business is required to provide enough fire exits and adequate ventilation. One exception is noise. A business can legally provide an environment that could permanently destroy your hearing. Your only recourse is a civil lawsuit but since most hearing loss is insidious, you would have a hard time proving the source of your hearing damage. I've been going to the clubs for years without earplugs and my hearing is fine, if I was susceptible to hearing damage wouldn't I have noticed the effects by now? No, we're all susceptible to hearing loss. By the time you've noticed you've lost it, it's too late. You can prevent further damage but you'll never regain what's lost. And keep in mind, many people have developed tinitus (permanent ringing in the ears) or hyperacusis (being overly sensitive to noise) after just one exposure to very loud noise.
Decibel Exposure Time Guidelines
Accepted standards for recommended permissible exposure time for continuous time weighted average noise, according to NIOSH and CDC, 2002. For every 3 dBs over 85dBA (A weighting), the permissible exposure time before possible damage can occur is cut in half.
Continuous dB Permissible Exposure Time
85 db 8 hours
88 dB 4 hours
91 db 2 hours
94 db 1 hour
97 db 30 minutes
100 db 15 minutes
103 db 7.5 minutes
106 dB 3.75 min (< 4min)
109 dB 1.875 min (< 2min)
112 dB .9375 min (~1 min)
115 dB .46875 min (~30 sec)
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Last edited by in2muzikk on Jul-28-2014 at 05:04
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TranceAddicts Hear it All: Official Resource for Hearing Information and Protection!
