HearingFactFriday: You Can Have Hearing Loss Before You Even Realize It

It’s hardly a spoiler alert to tell you the world is a noisy place. From sports venues and restaurants to cineplexes and city streets, loudness is trending. Yet, according to a 2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 70 percent of people exposed to loud noise “never or seldom wear hearing protection.”

And who can blame us? We (hopefully) protect our hearing if we work in a noisy environment. But who thinks to (or wants to) wear ear plugs just going about our daily lives?

Maybe we should — because the CDC estimates that 53 percent of us with hearing damage do not have noisy jobs, and, as today’s Hearing Fact Friday points out, 25 percent of us already have hearing damage and we don’t even know it yet.

For more information on hearing loss — or to check quickly if you might have it — visit this Hearing Journey tool.

If you’d like to know if the sounds you’re exposed to are harmful, our free SoundCheck app lets you measure the decibel level of any environment you’re in. Download it FREE from the App Store or Google Play.