¾«¶«´«Ã½

Berlin

UP TO a quarter of young Germans have damaged their hearing by listening
to loud music, according to a study of military recruits. And one in ten of the
country’s 18-year-olds may have suffered damage severe enough to handicap them
in normal conversation, a separate study has found. The results have prompted
German officials to propose Europe-wide limits on the volume of personal
stereos.

Researchers at the Institute for Occupational Medicine at the Heinrich Heine
University in Düsseldorf examined 1800 men between the ages of 16 and 24 at
several military recruiting offices around the country. They found some hearing
loss in around a quarter of them. They also discovered that the recruits with
poor hearing were more likely to have spent time listening to loud music.

In a second study, supported by the government’s Federal Environment Office
(FEO), researchers examined the listening habits and hearing of 270 students in
Berlin. According to Hartmut Ising, a specialist on noise pollution at the FEO,
nearly 10 per cent of students aged between 16 and 18 had lost so much of their
hearing that they had difficulty understanding some normal conversation.

The researchers also found that students who listened to music on headphones
for more than two hours a day and visited discos at least once a week suffered,
on average, a 10-decibel reduction in their hearing sensitivity. Most of this
loss was in the frequency range between 3 kilohertz and 6 kilohertz, which might
prevent a person distinguishing between the sounds of the letters “s” and “f”.

Adrian Davis, who works at the Medical Research Council’s Institute of
Hearing Research in Nottingham, says he is “a little sceptical” about the German
results. His own studies have failed to find a similar pattern of hearing damage
among British youngsters who listen to loud music. Similar studies in Sweden
have also failed to establish such a pattern.

The German government, however, is now calling for the European Union to
limit the noise levels of personal stereos. It has proposed a maximum output of
90 decibels, a significant reduction from the 120 decibels produced by some
personal stereos. The proposal is under consideration by CENELEC, a body within
the European Commission that sets standards for electronic equipment. Other
countries have been asked to submit their views on the German proposal by 15
July.

The German move follows unilateral action by France, which last year passed a
law capping the output of personal stereos at 100 decibels
(“Falling on deaf ears”,
New ¾«¶«´«Ã½, 29 June 1996, p 12).

Manufacturers claim that there is no widely accepted method for measuring the
sound emitted by personal stereos. Sound levels measured by a microphone on the
earphones of a music system are not equivalent to what is actually heard by the
ear, they say.