by Patrick Sills

Created on: April 07, 2010   Last Updated: July 30, 2010

When asked whether or not headphones damage your hearing, I have an answer. At the volume I listened to music through them, you better believe it.  As a teenager growing up in the 1970s, eight-track players were considered state-of-the art audio equipment. I had headphones attached so that my parents wouldn’t complain about having to listen to Jimi Hendrix, Grand Funk Railroad, or Black Sabbath as they tried to carry on a conversation. And naturally, this music sounded best at Volume 10.

In addition, from the time the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was all of 4, I wanted to play in a rock and roll band, and by the time I reached 15, this dream became a reality. The hard rock of this period called for being played loudly, as one could imagine. As time went on, some of the bands I played in began to do home recording, which oftentimes required the use of headphones in order to clearly hear everything that was going on.

On one such occasion in the spring of 1982, a band I was playing with set out to record a demo tape so we could promote ourselves. We made use of an independent recording studio. This particular band played very hard rock that employed screaming vocals along the lines of AC/DC. As we were playing a song, the engineer decided to crank the volume all the way up on the mixing console just prior to one of these screaming vocal parts. As the vocalist’s shrilling part entered my set of headphones, a clear-colored liquid literally blew out of my right ear! Immediately afterwards, I could hear nothing out of that ear except a high-pitched ringing that landed somewhere between a high A flat and A natural note. I experienced something similar a few years before when I pumped a bicycle tire up too much and it exploded.

At any rate, I feared the worst: a perforated eardrum. I went to an ear specialist a couple of days later and much to my relief learned that I merely blew wax out of my ear. Centuries earlier Sir Issac Newton proclaimed that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Thus, the ringing was caused by additional wax being blown against my eardrum. The doctor poked around with different instruments and eventually removed the wax, but the ringing never completely went away, and I experience tinnitus to this day. 

It isn’t particularly noticeable until I find myself in a quiet room with no other background noise. When this occurs, I hear a constant ringing that never subsides. Moreover, my place of employment requires annual hearing tests, and to no surprise, I am described as having significant hearing loss. This becomes very evident when I have to ask my wife and /or daughter to repeat what they’ve just said. I can hear, mind you. It’s just that a phrase such as, “I have soccer practice tonight” will come out sounding like, “ I had a sucker with rats tonight.”

The style of popular music that young people listen has changed, but the potential for hearing damage through headphones certainly hasn't. Every medical professional will concur, and well, I'm living proof.

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