William A. Yost- wyost@luc.edu
Noorah Koita, Robert Maslo, Prasad Patel, Ruchita Patel, Brendan Ringhouse
Loyola University Chicago 6525 N. Sheridan Rd.
Chicago, IL 60626

Popular version of paper 3aNS15
Presented Thursday morning, November 30, 2006
4th ASA/ASJ Joint Meeting, Honolulu, HI

The world is a noisy place that appears to be getting noisier all the time. In addition, the use of musical devices such as iPods adds to the sound exposure that we experience each day. Does the overall level of sound that we might experience on a daily basis cause a risk to our hearing?

Obtaining information about this question was the aim of a study conducted by a team of undergraduate students at Loyola University of Chicago. These students gathered data about the type of sound exposure they experience while being a student. They wore noise dosimeters, which measures the level of sound around them and they kept a standardized diary of their activities while they wore the noise dosimeters. Each of the five students collected five days of data and each day consisted of between 8 and 10 hours. Sound level measurements were obtained by the noise dosimeters every minute. Thus, there were more than 2500 sound-level measurements obtained for each student.

The students spent about 25% of their time in class and another 13% studying (e.g., in the library, 3% of the time). They listen to music or TV about 10% of the time and conversed with their friends about 15% of their time, and about 6% of their time was spent eating or at a restaurant. The rest of their time was primarily spent in their apartments doing chores or commuting between school and their apartments and/or their homes in the greater Chicago area. The sound levels they were exposed to varied greatly over any 8-10 hour day, ranging from a peak level of about 55 dBA to over 140 dBA. However, the overall sound-level they experienced one any day was low.

The Occupational Safety and Heath Administration (OSHA) has established a sound level dose criterion for the workplace, such that if the noise-dose criterion exceeds 100%, a worker is in jeopardy of suffering a hearing loss and corrective measures must be taken. The noise dose experienced by the students ranged from 0 to 10% (an average of just over 2%), indicating a low noise dose. The highest sound levels were associated with eating in restaurants, listening to music (e.g., the radio) and TV, and using public transportation such as the subway or train, and in the car. Very high levels were obtained when appliances such as vacuum cleaners or hair dryers were used, but these exposures occurred for very brief periods.

Overall this study suggests that university students, during the school day, are not exposed to high levels of sound that would pose a risk to their hearing. Follow-up studies are planned to determined sound level exposure for non-school days (i.e., the weekend) and to estimate the sound level university students receive when they listen to music using earphones (e.g., using an iPod).