‘‘My mom says it will damage my hearing," said Kalah, 13, a seventh-grader at Davis Middle School. ‘‘But I don’t really care."

As movies and video games grow louder, and more people purchase MP3 players with high volume levels and in-ear headphone buds, hearing-loss experts are concerned that young adults frequently exposed to such noise are at risk for permanent hearing damage.

‘‘I don’t think parents are aware, and I don’t think students are aware," said Karen Mitchell, director of audiology and hearing-aid services at Columbus Speech & Hearing Center. ‘‘The noise we’re exposed to on a daily basis can take its toll."

A recent study published in the medical journal Pediatrics estimated that 12.5 percent of American children age 6 to 19 — about 5.2 million — have some noiseinduced hearing loss.

The study also found that boys were affected more often than girls.

Audiologists (specialists who study speech and hearing disorders) recommend keeping music and other household noise at the lowest decibel levels possible.

Decibels are the units used to measure the loudness of sound. A conversation you might have with a friend would register at roughly 60 decibels.

Any sound less than 75 decibels is unlikely to cause hearing loss. But a lot of everyday noises are louder than you think.

A hair dryer can be about 90 decibels. Fireworks can go as high as 140 decibels — far above a safe listening range. Even a pep rally or school band rehearsal can exceed a healthy noise limit. Although short periods of exposure to loud noises can be experienced without significant hearing loss, lengthy and repeated exposure can cause hearing damage.

An iPod at full volume is roughly 115 decibels — a little quieter than a jackhammer (130 decibels), a bit louder than a chainsaw (100 decibels), according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

But, unlike an iPod, the jackhammer isn’t fitted inside your ear and played for several hours.

That’s the main problem, experts said. People assume that the electronic devices, even at their maximum volumes, are safe.

Lisa Kleinline, an audiologist at Children’s Hospital in Columbus, said she is seeing a greater number of teens and young people treated for hearing loss. Part of that, she said, is due to more regular use of iPods and MP3 players.

‘‘Our environment in general is just getting louder — movies, music, everything," she said.

Those loud noises, as a result, can damage the delicate hair cells in the inner ear that transmit sound to the brain. That damage cannot be reversed, Kleinline said.

Still, many young people are unaware of the risks. Only 8 percent of the 10,000 people who responded to an MTV survey last year said they considered hearing loss from loud music ‘‘a very big problem."

An informal survey of central Ohio teens and young people revealed similar attitudes.

Gabi Vega, 14, of Granville, said she doesn’t hesitate to shop at the mall, even though the music played at her favorite stores, including Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch, is ‘‘really loud." She goes to concerts with her mom. And, last year, she even blew out her iPod headphones because the volume was so high.

But has Gabi, an eighth-grader at Granville Middle School, turned down the noise since? Not really.

‘‘It gives a better effect" when loud, she said.

She isn’t alone.

‘‘You want to feel like it’s loud," said Payton Gutierrez, 11, of Canal Winchester, who plays his iPod five to six hours a day, often at full volume (until a parent tells him to turn it down).

Still, the fifth-grader at Canal Winchester Intermediate School said that sometimes he will encounter something surprisingly loud, such as the music at a Blue Jackets hockey game or the special effects in a children’s movie such as The Polar Express.

Even Kalah, who said she doesn’t care about hearing loss, acknowledged that her ears ‘‘were ringing for a week" after a very noisy rock show she attended last fall.

Others, meanwhile, are taking precautions.

Helen Lee, 15, a Worthington resident and a freshman at Thomas Worthington High School, sets a positive example. She never keeps the volume on her iPod more than halfway up, and she listens to it only for short periods when studying or in the car. She has heeded the warnings from television news — and also from her parents, who bought her the player for Christmas.

‘‘I don’t turn the music loud," she said. ‘‘I’m just being safe."

By Kevin Joy
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/news/now/now.php?story=dispatch/2006/03/01/20060301-H1-00.html