Does loud music wreck your hearing?
Loud music damages your hearing — a warning that we're used to taking as fact. But surprisingly, little research has actually been done into how sustained exposure to loud music affects our hearing in the long term, and the results we do have are far from conclusive. A new research project taking place at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) National Biomedical Research Unit in Hearing, based at The University of Nottingham, is the first to explicitly examine the effect of long-term exposure to loud music. Researchers are looking to recruit 2,000 volunteers from an 'older generation of music listeners' in a large-scale study that is the first of its kind in the world. Volunteers carry out the 20-minute test online via the unit's internet research portal. An anonymous questionnaire first collects data on hearing status, other factors that may have caused hearing damage and — most importantly — a life-long history of music exposure in different environments; including gigs, pubs, clubs and using personal music players. The volunteers then take a hearing test on their home computer, which measures the ability to hear a set of numbers against a background noise.
