Recently, the European Commission asked scientists to evaluate the effects of prolonged exposure to high levels of “leisure noise,” and the results of the study were more than worrying.

 

As the EU researchers discovered, there are tens of millions of young people that can experience definitive hearing loss due to the fact that they listen to their MP3 players at too high volumes for more than 5 hours per week. In fact, most of the youngsters are doing so on a daily basis.

 

In a recent statement issued by the European Commission, the executive part of the European Union, it has been stated that “There has been increasing concern about exposure from the new generation of personal music players which can reproduce sounds at very high volumes without loss of quality. Risk for hearing damage depends on sound level and exposure time.”

 

The researchers believe that the number of young persons that like to perform this task daily is situated somewhere between 50 and 100 million, and it is continuously increasing. The maximal limit admitted by EU regulations with respect to safety measures is a sound level of 89 decibels for 5 hours a week. Exceeding that limit leads to permanent hearing loss within as little as 5 years.

 

Out of the people from countries in the European Union that listen to their MP3s every day, 10% fall in this category. The fact that their number is constantly growing is reflected in the exponential increase in MP3 and other personal music players sales of the last few years (184 and 246 million music playing devices sold during the last 4 years, 124 to 165 million of which were MP3s). However, although accountable for the largest segment of users, MP3s are not the only ones potentially responsible for this health problem. Latest models of mobile phones are also making their way on the blacklist of the European Commission.

 

As the statement proves, the European Union's consumer affairs commissioner, Meglena Kuneva, is worried about the evolution of “leisure noise,” as she was quoted as saying, “I am concerned that so many young people [...] who are frequent users of personal music players and mobile phones at high acoustic levels, may be unknowingly damaging their hearing irrevocably.”