Digital Home Thoughts: Earbuds May Cause Hearing Loss

"All those ears ringing from newly gifted iPods and MP3 players may not be able to hear next year's Christmas bells as well if music lovers aren't careful, hearing specialists are warning... The big culprits aren't the devices themselves, but the tiny "ear bud'' style headphones that the music players use. "Unfortunately, the earbuds are even more likely to cause hearing loss than the muff-type earphones that were used on Walkman and portable CD players,'' Garstecki said. In a study published last year in the journal Ear and Hearing, researchers at Harvard Medical School looked at a variety of headphones and found that, on average, the smaller they were, the higher their output levels at any given volume-control setting."

Scary, though I feel like I have heard this before. I am definitely guilty of turning the volume up on my iRiver so I will consciously try and lower the volume now. However, I think it is going to be hard to expect all consumers to do the same. I think the onus is on the haedphone manufacturing companies to come up with a solution. I feel that simply lowering the higher levels on earbuds won't cut it because end users will just raise the volume some more. I think we should expect some innovation in this field.