Hearing Health

General information

College Music Students: A Population at risk

In "Examining the noisy life of the college musician: weeklong noise dosimetry of music and non-music activities", based on a one-week long assessment of the noise exposure of 22 college student musicians and 40 non-musicians, Tufts and Skoe concluded the following:

            • “musicians experienced significantly higher average exposure levels than did non-musicians. Nearly half (47%) of the musicians’ days exceeded a daily dose of 100%;).”
            • “For some musicians, non-music activities contributed a larger share of their total weekly noise exposure than did their music activities.”

Also from Tufts and Skoe, 2018:

  • "A growing body of research indicates that college music students’ exposure to sound routinely exceeds the recommended exposure limits specified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health NIOSH (1998)"
  • "Phillips et al. have identified high-frequency hearing loss ‘‘notches’’ consistent with excessive sound exposure in college music students and have shown that these notches become more pronounced with increasing years spent in a college music programme"


Hearing loss and unsafe listening with personal audio devices

  • Those exposed to loud sounds in social settings for a period of 20 years and over are more than three times at risk of hearing loss compared to those unexposed.
  • 50% of people listening to music on personal audio devices do so at levels which put their hearing at risk.
  • 5–10% of listeners are likely to develop hearing loss due to the volume level of their personal devices and the duration of their listening.

Source: Toolkit for safe listening devices and systems. World Health Organization & International Telecommunication Union. (‎2019)‎. World Health Organization. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/280086.