big ears
Well-Known Member
Hope you shoot off the left shoulder?
If not then you got it in the wrong ear. The noise comes from the muzzle so a plug in the right ear of a right shouldered shooter is useless. Needs to be in your left!!!
Hearing Protection while stalking
- Thread starter Terrydeer
- Start date
If not then you got it in the wrong ear. The noise comes from the muzzle so a plug in the right ear of a right shouldered shooter is useless. Needs to be in your left!!!
Sol
Well-Known Member
I dont wear protection for rifles at the moment but I do when using shotguns given your usually firing quite a few shots through it I suspect I may have APD so Its something I keep an eye on.
Either my hearings already smashed or Its that, but I cant imagine a combination of both being great!
Either my hearings already smashed or Its that, but I cant imagine a combination of both being great!
True, I shoot right handed & my hearing (especially for high pitched noises) is more degraded in the left ear.
big ears
Well-Known Member
It’s a common mistake to protect the wrong ear.
Sol
Well-Known Member
For sure might be related too a few other things that I wont mention on a public forum but It definitely Is a possible relation.
I dont own a FAC at the moment so I'm only hearing a few rifle (moderated) shots every few months but I cant see myself attempting to use a rifle without some sort of protection especially when I'm already severely blind In one eye.
I wouldn't wish being deaf and possibly severely blind later In life It sounds horrid.
You are correct. Personally I do protect my hearing & have done for years but early damage has an effect that doesn’t go away. The advent of electronic ear protection has removed any excuses for not wearing.
billgatese30
Well-Known Member
Hearing protection in one ear doesn't make much sense to me, its a bit like wearing a monocle instead of welding goggles!
You only get one set of ears, and after 20 years of working in factories with foam plugs that worked loose while busy means at only 37 I can already tell my hearing is declining. When shooting I always have my electronic muffs on, unless its a moderated. 22lr of course.
You only get one set of ears, and after 20 years of working in factories with foam plugs that worked loose while busy means at only 37 I can already tell my hearing is declining. When shooting I always have my electronic muffs on, unless its a moderated. 22lr of course.
caorach
Well-Known Member
Protection against damage is an active process within your ear, your ear makes physical changes to protect itself. In the same way as people can be right handed, or right eye dominant, so you can also be "right eared." The majority of people tend to be stronger in their right ear, I don't think the exact figures have ever been quantified that I've seen, and so their right ear is less susceptible to damage relative to their left ear. In the shooting community you often hear people say that they have more damage in their left ear because of the shoulder they shoot off and this has been shown not to be true. As I recall the research into this was done by the Israeli army who had a large number of test subjects and found that it didn't matter which shoulder you shot off. I don't have the reference for this to hand but it may be in the Moore "Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing"
Based upon this it is almost certain that the damage to your left ear has nothing to do with how you shoot but rather indicates that your right ear is stronger and so better able to "defend" against damage.
caorach
Well-Known Member
Anyone who is interested in learning more about their hearing and wishes to move away from the "old wives tales" that are so common should make the effort to read Brian Moore's book "An Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing." I believe the book was first published in the late 1970s but it has been updated many times since and I think the most recent is the 6th edition. With it being a scientific text book getting a new one can be extremely expensive but older editions are really cheap (I mean less than £3 with free postage from Amazon) second hand and, apart from some details, the physics and physical makeup of your hearing has not changed much so an older edition is still well worth reading.
The book is aimed at graduate level students so it covers pretty much all the basics on how sound and hearing work and you don't need any maths to read it but equally it isn't "easy" reading and the learning curve might be a bit steep, at least in some places, for those with no grounding in physics. However if you are the sort of person with an enquiring mind it is well worth a read.
Moore is perhaps the most significant figure working in this field:
en.wikipedia.org
The book is aimed at graduate level students so it covers pretty much all the basics on how sound and hearing work and you don't need any maths to read it but equally it isn't "easy" reading and the learning curve might be a bit steep, at least in some places, for those with no grounding in physics. However if you are the sort of person with an enquiring mind it is well worth a read.
Brian C. J. Moore: books, biography, latest update
Follow Brian C. J. Moore and explore their bibliography from Amazon.com's Brian C. J. Moore Author Page.
www.amazon.co.uk
Moore is perhaps the most significant figure working in this field:
Brian Moore (scientist) - Wikipedia
big ears
Well-Known Member
Absolutely.
big ears
Well-Known Member
With all due respect having 36 years as an ENT surgeon this is complete tosh!
The protective mechanism you refer to are two small muscles in the middle ear. The reaction time of these muscles is not quick enough to moderate excessive noise. That is why we get noise induced hearing loss.
Damage is related to noise intensity and time of noise exposure, damage starts above 70dB but you need to be exposed for six hours for the damage to be permanent. At 120dB the damage is instantaneous.
Sound intensity reduces the further away from the sound source you are and also by any object between you and the sound source. That’s why defenders work.
Shooting a rifle off the right shoulder means the left ear is closest to the muzzle and has only air between it and sound source. The sound arriving at right ear is attenuated by the skull which is said to be about 30dB. This is for an average skull though some will be thicker than others.
In other words the skull gives you the same protection as an ear plug.
Nothing to do with favourite ears or psychology just simple physics.
Don’t be conned. Wear ear protection or take the consequences.
BE
As a very lay person, that's kinda how I understood it.
So providing my moderated 308 is under 120db then I'm OK? I've quite sensitive hearing having being diagnosed with migraine of the the ears and eyes, well before my shooting career I hasten to add, but I've never reacted badly to my modded 308 in any way
....huge mod on it
I'm a bit out of date so these figures below might have changed but ....
In industry 90dB(A) , now 85dB(A) based upon an 8 hour exposure was / is the upper exposure value / threshold for noise attenuation or PPE
Impact noise - of, for example a rifle or shot gun, is slightly different
If, for example a rifle shot gives a peak reading of 150 dB(C) but is moderated down below 137 dB(C) with a good moderator, then it is technically under the upper exposure value (based upon regular weekly exposure)
These A and C scales are different measuring techniques based upon either absolute Sound Pressure Levels('c' scale) and those frequencies that we are sensitive to ('a' scale)
I've often wondered if, when wearing noise protection, the bone conduction as a result of good cheek weld undermines the protection you seek to provide yourself
Either way - ear protection, moderators and limiting exposure are the only mitigations available to us
Noise induced hearing loss is permanent
It is not funny to suffer from it - I do - I believe it is as a consequence of damage to the hairs within the cochlea that vibrate at different frequencies and translate those vibrations into electrical impulses that the brain can interpret
Excessive noise exposure damages those hairs and they do not repair
There is a protective device within the ear which is provided by a disengaging of the mallius, incus and stapes (3 bones within the middle ear) - a bit like dropping the clutch - which gives temporary respite and was/is referred to as 'temporary threshold shift '
Night club visitors might have noticed this phenomena when they temporarily shout in order to be heard just after leaving the venue. However it doesn't react fast enough to mitigate impact noise
The one up side to noise induced deafness is that you can't hear your wife's litany of your character faults
In industry 90dB(A) , now 85dB(A) based upon an 8 hour exposure was / is the upper exposure value / threshold for noise attenuation or PPE
Impact noise - of, for example a rifle or shot gun, is slightly different
If, for example a rifle shot gives a peak reading of 150 dB(C) but is moderated down below 137 dB(C) with a good moderator, then it is technically under the upper exposure value (based upon regular weekly exposure)
These A and C scales are different measuring techniques based upon either absolute Sound Pressure Levels('c' scale) and those frequencies that we are sensitive to ('a' scale)
I've often wondered if, when wearing noise protection, the bone conduction as a result of good cheek weld undermines the protection you seek to provide yourself
Either way - ear protection, moderators and limiting exposure are the only mitigations available to us
Noise induced hearing loss is permanent
It is not funny to suffer from it - I do - I believe it is as a consequence of damage to the hairs within the cochlea that vibrate at different frequencies and translate those vibrations into electrical impulses that the brain can interpret
Excessive noise exposure damages those hairs and they do not repair
There is a protective device within the ear which is provided by a disengaging of the mallius, incus and stapes (3 bones within the middle ear) - a bit like dropping the clutch - which gives temporary respite and was/is referred to as 'temporary threshold shift '
Night club visitors might have noticed this phenomena when they temporarily shout in order to be heard just after leaving the venue. However it doesn't react fast enough to mitigate impact noise
The one up side to noise induced deafness is that you can't hear your wife's litany of your character faults
Last edited:
caorach
Well-Known Member
Nothing you say is supported by the science, and there is no such thing as a "dB" as an absolute measure of sound pressure.
Above approx 135dB(A) the damage mechanism transitions from "dose" to "instantaneous" this is why on some rifles some moderators can be sufficient to move the damage mechanism from "instant" to "dose" and because of the extremely short duration of a gunshot the dose can be relatively low if the number of shots are limited. One of the forestry organisations commissioned some research when they were introducing moderators and it concluded that, on the rifle and moderator combinations they tested, their moderated rifles were safe for around 200 shots in any 24 hour period. Some aspects of this research were flawed but the conclusion was broadly correct even if they got the numbers somewhat wrong. The British Army also found something similar and concluded "At 20 m from the firer, if hearing protection is not worn, the noise exposure of an observer or bystander will reach the upper exposure action value of 85 dB(A) LEP,d after 1440 rounds per day" so this differentiation between "dose" and "instant damage" is well understood in relation to firearms.
The skull is what limits the attenuation you can achieve with an earplug, or the over ear type ear defenders, and is generally considered to offer attenuation of around 40dB with many of the foam earplugs and ear defenders now approaching this limit. The attenuation, of course, varies with frequency. However in terms of the "shadow" that your skull produces that somewhat reduces the SPL at one ear compared with the other then because of the dimensions of the skull this only happens at higher frequencies and the overall reduction in SPL at the "shaded" ear is modest, (Research into the British SA80 rifle put the average difference of peak sound pressure between the ears as 2.4dB and I believe they used C weighting for these tests) though to be fair there is probably a single frequency where the attenuation will indeed be 30dB. In practical situations the SPLs of each ear overlap so either ear my be subjected to a higher SPL on any given shot.
As an aside in early experiments with hearing that were carried out on animals the results were found to be inconsistent and sometimes unexpected. It has since been established that the physical and psychological state of the subject of hearing experiments can be extremely important and can have important physiological implications - the most interesting effect of this is that people who are relaxed and in a good mood, say someone at a rock concert with a couple of beers in them, can suffer little or no damage when someone who was in a less positive psychological condition might suffer damage related to the noise level present. Your dismissal of the research suggesting that people may have a "stronger" ear when it is widely known and accepted that most people have a stronger arm, leg, and eye etc. may be misplaced. As with most people being right handed so, it seems, most people are right eared and it is the case that even those who shoot off their left shoulder often suffer most damage in their left ear - it was the Israeli military who first documented this and did some research.
big ears
Well-Known Member
Low frequency noise is like to be the ones transmitted through bone, the higher frequency, more damaging, frequencies are attenuated very quickly.
It’s the boom we feel not the crack is a simple way of putting it.
You are spot on in everything else you say
big ears
Well-Known Member
A dB (short for decibel) is a tenth of a Bel. The dB the SI unit for sound intensity.
Hair cell death is the cause of noise induced hearing loss(NIHL). There is similar numbers of hair cells in both cochlears.
Hair cell death in NIHL occurs in the basal turn responsible for high frequency losses. Classically around 6kHz
These are absolute facts.
Hearing perception is a very different matter and relies on effective detection at cochlear level but then these impulses are subject to interpretation at a higher level in the auditory part of the brain. Emotion, hormones, tiredness and many more things can affect how the impulses from the cochlears are perceived.
There is an element of bilateral representation in the auditory cortex but mainly it is contra lateral. In early life there is brain plasticity which can increase this ipsilateral and contra lateral representation but it is never complete and always contra lateral representation is the greatest. If for any reason there is a temporary reduction in hearing (for instance glue ear) there may be a reduction in development of one auditory cortex in its processing ability. This is one of the ways we feel APD develops. There are others. Such subtle differences can be perceived as a better ear.
We know this from cochlear implantation work and longitudinal studies into the effect of chronic otitis media.
Favouring of an ear does not reduce the impact of high intensity sounds on the cochlear as you claimed (regardless of dB scale used). There is some evidence that internal vascular structure in the cochlear may alter the impact of sound related damage as ischaemia is thought to be an important cause of hair cell death
The fact remains that using a firearm without adequate ear protection is complete folly. No one should be saying that it is OK to shoot without adequate protection because it’s your favourite ear.
BE
billgatese30
Well-Known Member
I've spent the best part of my career working with several of the worlds biggest Hearing Aid manufacturers and manufacturers of Cochlear implants. I suggest you try and educate them on your theory about "strongest" ears, or perhaps talk to your local audiologist. Strong ears cannot protect themselves from NIHL, period. Thats like saying my stronger eye is more resistant to getting injured from something hitting it.
Reducing the sound pressure (whether dBa or dBc) over time or in terms of the absolute max will save your hearing. Assuming your skull will protect one ear as its simply on the other side from the rifle will lead to hearing loss I guarantee it.
Similar threads
