Which sound do you think would be loudest: a rock concert, a balloon popping, or a power drill?

Surprisingly, the loudest out of those three would be a balloon popping, even if it’s just for a split second. All of these can cause considerable damage to your ears with prolonged exposure, especially without proper hearing protection.

But how do we measure the volume of a sound?

We measure sound in decibels (dB), and it works on a logarithmic scale; with each decibel that a sound raises in volume, it’s getting exponentially louder. Decibels are typically scaled from 0 dB, the softest sounds we can hear with normal hearing, up to 200 dB – the loudest sound ever recorded was the first stage of the Saturn V rocket at 204 dB.

A rock concert would measure at around 120 dB, and a power drill is a little above it at 130 dB. A balloon popping hits at approximately 157 dB for a split second, while a concert or a drill lasts significantly longer than that.

Of course, we don’t usually hear things up to 200 dB, and thank goodness we don’t! As humans, our hearing is safe with sounds up to 85 dB; anything louder than that can cause damage to our hearing.

Volume + Exposure = Damage

When you come in to visit us for a comprehensive hearing assessment, we’ll often tell you what level of hearing loss you have on a decibel scale; if we said that you have 30 dB of hearing loss, you would have a mild hearing loss level that would be pretty easily corrected with the help of hearing aids.

The formula that we typically tell patients is to keep in mind the volume of the sound—for instance, a song playing through your headphones as you’re mowing the lawn—and the duration of the loud volume itself. Listening to one song at a loud volume over the lawnmower won’t hurt too badly, but the entire album blasting in your headphones could cause more damage than you’d expect.

Noise travels as a wave. When that wave of loud sound hits our eardrums, it makes the eardrums vibrate like real drums. The louder the sound, the more your eardrums move, and the intricate bones inside our inner ears are moving along with it, like the sticks against the drums.

Noise-induced hearing loss comes about from loud noise hitting our ears and causing actual, physical damage to the inner ears, along with overwhelming the hair cells we need to hear properly with too much noise.

How Do I Protect My Hearing from Noise Damage?

We live in a pretty noisy place! Hearing protection is vital to looking after your hearing, especially if you frequent a lot of these loud environments like concerts, construction sites, or places with firearms and power tools present.