Why is Ear Protection Important?

Many wonder why ear protection is important and if one truly needs it. The answer is yes. Ear protection helps to protect your hearing from damaging noise that may be present at any given time around you. Long exposure to these loud noises can cause serious long-term damage that only gets worse over time; so protecting your ears is an important part of protecting your hearing from these damaging noises.

What do your ears do?

Your ear is an amazing part of your body. It helps you to hear the world around you. It helps to interpret sounds, to balance you and it even cleans itself. However, the down part about the ear is that once the tiny hairs inside the cochlea in the inner ear are damaged, typically due to exposure to noise, they can no longer be repaired. In other words, once they are done they are done — there is no coming back. No surgery can replace or fix these tiny hairs, which is why it is so important for those at any age to help protect their hearing before it is too late.

Causes of hearing loss

Researchers and audiologists have been learning for years to understand and see why and what causes hearing loss. While aging is the biggest culprit, noise exposure is a common cause of hearing loss. With the industrial revolution hearing loss became more and more common but it was not until later in the 20^th century that all of the pieces began to fall into place to truly understand how workplace noise affects hearing loss.

Upon understanding this, many workplaces, industries and governments throughout the world have integrated new workplace mandates in regards to hearing protection to help protect their works from exposure, especially long exposure, to loud noises. These steps have been integral in protecting hearing at work and have also helped to educate people in the importance of hearing protection outside of the workplace as well.

Protecting your hearing

Hearing protection at home is just as important as hearing protection at work. Mowing the lawn or redoing your deck can affect one’s hearing. These tasks around the home may not take a lot of time; however, over time they can cause damage that was once not present. It is also important to remember ear protection while at sporting events and even concerts. Any type of noise exposure can have damaging effects on ones hearing over time. This is why hearing protection is truly so important for anyone at any age. We must protect what we have because once it is gone we cannot get it back.