Study warns: children heard at risk

A Dutch study reported that children who listen to music using earphones may be more likely to be hearing impaired by noise.

The researchers studied the results of hearing tests involving 3316 children between the ages of 9 and 11, and asked parents about their children's complaints of hearing problems, the time spent listening to music through the earphones and how loud the sound was.

The researchers found that 443 children in total, or 14 percent, had at least some hearing difficulties at high frequencies.

The cause of hearing impairment at high frequencies, especially in young people, is the exposure to noise.

No matter how long young people wear earphones or how loud they are, researchers found that children who used portable music for a day or two a week were twice as likely to have hearing problems as their counterparts who did not use them at all.

"Although we can not conclude from this study that music playback devices are the cause of hearing impairment, it has been shown that exposure to music may affect hearing," said Karlin Lee Klerk, senior researcher at the Erasmus University Medical Institute in Rotterdam. At a young age. "

"It's important because hearing loss cannot be cured and therefore has lifelong consequences," she said.

Sounds can be heard for people with hearing impairment associated with low or distant noise and may hear ringing in the ear. This may happen temporarily after a noisy party, but it may always become frequent exposure to noise.

None of the children in the study had any hearing-related symptoms. Even for children with hearing impairment at high frequencies, only 7 percent complained of "occasional" or "recurrent" symptoms.