You awaken to the sound of loud jackhammer vibrations pounding through the walls of Stratton Hall. You leave for class, blasting Kanye West on your iPod so loudly that you provide a listening experience for the rest of the students walking up the Hill.
During your ride on the T after class, you crank up the iPod even higher to drown out the screeching noises of the subway car, requiring near-maximum volume. Then you meet up with your friends at the Middle East in Central Square: your favorite band is playing and you want to be there an hour early to get the coveted front row spots - right by the speakers.
With all this noise, it may come as no surprise that according to recent studies, adults aren't the only members of the population with noise-induced damage.
Most hearing damage is caused by long-term exposure to loud noise, and goes undetected until later in life. A July Newsweek cover story, however, said doctors today are noticing that in the baby boomer generation, hearing loss diagnosis is occurring a decade or more before the previous average of 60-years-old.
Senior Cynthia Waite is unsurprised. "I think that some people can have music on iPods at a dangerous level sometimes," she said. "There's definitely an issue there. Even my dad suffered hearing loss due to that, just from those old Walkmans! He has this condition now where he can get buzzing in his ear if he hears loud music. It was from long-term exposure to loud music."
Waite's 63-year-old father has tinnitus, which the American Tinnitus Association defines as "the perception of sound in the ears or head where no external source is present," commonly known as ringing in the ears. Exposure to loud noise can lead to inner ear and hair cell damage.
Almost 5.2 million children between the ages of 6 and 19 are suffering from some form of hearing damage due to "amplified music and other sources," the Newsweek article said.
"That's been a concern for a long time, ever since the inception of headphones into the mass market," Tufts Health Services Medical Director Margaret Higham said. "It's becoming a problem, with more and more time being spent listening with increased volume."
Many people in their late teens and early twenties don't think about hearing damage. "They probably won't see the damage caused until much later - we still have the feeling of invincibility," Waite said.
"You just don't think of these things," freshman Darin Bellisario said . "Even though it does hurt when you listen to music too loud, you never think about permanent damage."
Senior Andrew Walker doubts his peers have considered the possibility of hearing damage. "I don't think people our age worry about it very much, but yes, I think it's a danger," he said. "For instance, when you can clearly hear someone's song when they're wearing headphones and you're half a room away."
Senior Trevan Marden said he does not think about the issue - "at least not with any real thought of consequence."
"Every time I am at a party, and it's just way too loud, I know it's probably not good for me, but it's hard to be really concerned about it right now," Marden said.
"I'm always afraid of having permanent damage just from one stupid concert," Bellisario said. "I go anyway, but I feel bad about it every time."
Noise above 116 decibels is not safe even for limited exposure, the Newsweek article said. Rock concerts average 140 decibels. High sound levels are why airport ground traffic controllers are required to wear ear plugs and Tufts groundskeepers sport noise-drowning headphones.
Earplugs are not fool-proof. "My little brother had the cover to an ear bud fall off into his ear and he had to go to the hospital," sophomore Rachel Geylin said. "He couldn't hear while the thing was down there."
Despite this incident, Geylin remains unconcerned. "I'm not really concerned about hearing loss because I don't listen to music loudly," she said. "However, I can hear my roommate's music through her headphones while she is sitting across the room from me."
The problem, according to a CNN report, may come from people using headphones as "a full-day listening experience," and not just for 30 minutes of jogging. The noisy-world syndrome presents a danger to everyone: according to Newsweek, "while an individual's noise exposure may not reach the official danger zone, the worry is that the chronic din of daily life could lead to deterioration over time."
"I don't know if it is getting specifically worse for our generation, but I do feel that technology changes the causes," Marden said. "For my grandmother, working in a noisy factory probably was a major cause of her hearing loss. It's hard to say if the iPod is causing any significant new source of hearing loss that wasn't around before in a different technology - playing records too loud, or the eight-track."
