'There’s a direct relationship between the loudness of the sound, and the duration of that sound needed to cause damage,' Ricci says. That’s because playing white noise (which is noise that hits all frequencies), or any variation thereof - like brown noise, or pink noise - to drown out office conversations just adds volume to an already noisy environment. Here, ranked from worst to best, is what I’ve figured out.īlasting noise and music through earbuds is a bad idea

But I wanted to know what this daily onslaught of sound was doing to my delicate auditory system and what the best solution was to tune out conversations. My solution so far has been blasting white noise through my Apple EarPods. I want to avoid this, so I quizzed some experts about how best to solve my eavesdropping problem. However the damage occurs, people start noticing it when they can’t hear their friends in restaurants or at parties where there’s a lot of background noise. But in mice, at least, the hair cells (and the auditory nerves they connect to) can also be harmed by long-term exposure to quieter noise. Permanent hearing loss occurs when the hair cells are damaged, and in mammals, including humans, those cells are easily damaged by loud noises - like a concert or a shotgun blast. Permanent hearing loss occurs when the hair cells are damaged

The signal shoots along auditory nerves to the brain, and that’s when the system is complete: you’ve heard a sound. Inside the inner ear are the 'hair cells' that detect sound waves and transform them into signals our brains can understand. Those bones beat out a rhythm on the fluid-filled inner ear. Those sound waves then vibrate a membrane called the eardrum, which, in turn, creates tremors in three little bones in the middle ear. It starts with the outer ear, or pinna, which is basically a reverse megaphone it catches sound waves and funnels them into the ear canal. Think of your auditory system as a kind of Rube Goldberg machine. 'People are aging their ears much faster,' says Tony Ricci, a neuroscientist at Stanford University.īefore I explore my options, here's a quick-and-dirty overview of the auditory system. About half of people ages 12 to 35 in middle-to-high income countries are exposing themselves to unsafe levels of noise on their devices. But more than 1.1 billion young adults are also at risk, according to the World Health Organization, from turning up the volume on their smartphones and other devices. Hearing loss typically occurs as people age - about half of people over 65 have some typing of it, and it's irreversible. Whatever noise-dampening option I wind up sticking with, I want to be sure that it won't do more harm than good. I’ve used earplugs in the past, but it’s weird having to pry a neon-colored, earwax-covered piece of foam out of my ear every time someone talks to me. Sound-canceling headphones are appealing, but also expensive. Since I definitely don’t have the self control to just ignore my colleagues, I’ve been trying to drown them out - and every option seems like it has a downside. 'People are aging their ears much faster.' But in our open-plan office, there are a lot of conversations to overhear. If there’s a conversation near me, I listen - on the train, in restaurants, on the sidewalk, and especially at work.

White noise machine near me