If your ears ring after listening sessions (regardless of source) then you have done irreparable damage. -----Original Message----- From: real-eyes-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:real-eyes-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of V Nork Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2010 11:26 AM To: real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [real-eyes] On being safely plugged in Hello friends, Below is an amusing but thought provoking article from a British newspaper on safely using headphones. I found it a good reminder for myself, since I sometimes fall asleep while wearing my headphones while listening to my victor reader stream, and even radio broadcasts. The occaision of my finding this article was doing a search on Proquest on tinnitus, a sometimes maddening condition that features constant ringing or hissing in the ears. A friend of mine unfortunately seems to have suddenly developed tinnitus. It is. not clear what the triggers were in his case. But it does appear that often tinnitus occurs as a hearing loss in the higher frequencies that can happen after exposure to excess noise. Anyway, I pass this on not to nag, but just as a note of caution since we all depend so much on our hearing. My question is, in general, are ear buds a slightly safer choice than headphones since some sound may escape with the ear buds and the headphone seems a more of a direct channel to the ear?Best, Ginnie Turn down those headphones By Alisa Bowman Copyright Tribune Publishing Company Sep 6, 2010 A few months ago, while at an airport, I experienced a moment of weakness and I plunked down more money than I care to admit on a set of noise-reduction headphones. I love them because I'm not a particularly social person. When on a plane or a bus, I prefer to stay lost in my thoughts than to talk to the person next to me. Whenever I put on those big honking headphones, no one talks to me. They are an introvert's nirvana. But now that I have them, I find that I listen to music a lot more often than I once did. On the Bieber bus, for instance, I once used to nap or read as I traveled to and from New York. Now I put on my headphones, plug them into my iPhone and listen to Pandora. I even wear them when walking to and from my destination in the city. Let me tell you: New York City really comes alive when it's set to a tune by the Beastie Boys. When I'm listening to an awesome song (the theme song from "Flashdance" comes to mind and, yes, I have eclectic tastes in music) it's, of course, tempting to keep turning up the volume. Yet doing so could be risky. A recent study of 8,710 teens showed that high-frequency hearing loss doubled and the incidence of tinnitus (ringing, buzzing, hissing in the ears) tripled as the use of personal music players rose. Girls who used personal listening devices like iPods were 80 percent more likely to have hearing loss than girls who did not use them. It's quite sobering news. It's not necessarily that the headphones themselves are the problem, but that we tend to listen to music at a much higher volume through headphones than we would if we weren't wearing them. After all, with the headphones on, no one else in the house (or on the Bieber bus) is going to yell, "Turn down that stupid Donna Summer song. It's driving me crazy!" To save your hearing, keep your music volume to roughly the same volume as conversational speech. Alisa Bowman writes for The Morning Call's To subscribe or to leave the list, or to set other subscription options, go to www.freelists.org/list/real-eyes To subscribe or to leave the list, or to set other subscription options, go to www.freelists.org/list/real-eyes