- Hi guys welcome back to the Dr. Cliff AuD vlog,
this is vlog number 26 and today we're gonna blow stuff up.
But before we get to blowing stuff up,
and really what I mean
is we're gonna be setting off some firecrackers,
this week is the week leading into the 4th of July
and in the United States, the 4th of July
is Independence Day, and the tradition around here
is to actually set off some fireworks and firecrackers,
and things of that nature.
But, doing that is fun,
but I have to tell you that it is also dangerous,
not only can you blow your hands off,
even more importantly,
you can damage your hearing permanently.
And before we get to the end of this video
where I'm gonna be setting off
all of these exciting firecrackers here,
I am actually gonna have, really force you
to sit through my PSA, my public service announcement here,
so don't be the type of person to fast forward
through to the end of the video.
Stick with me for a few minutes,
let me explain a few things about protecting your hearing
and then we'll get to the blowing stuff up part, okay?
So, really quick rewind, back when I went into the military,
that is when they identified that I had
a hearing loss in my right ear.
And the audiologist who saw me
was very straightforward and direct we'll say,
when he said, "Cliff, you have to make sure
"that you protect your hearing
"anytime you're doing anything, like shooting guns,
"setting off grenades, claymores, like whatever",
all the fun explosive stuff
that we got to do in the Marine Corps.
And so that really resonated with me,
that was a point in my life
where I really needed to hear that
so I took hearing protection seriously.
And when I got into grad school, my capstone project,
so my research project really was
around hearing protection and how effective it was,
and so forth.
And so I just want to go through a few quick things here
with you to make sure that you understand
the dangers that are involved with playing with loud things,
shooting guns, whatever the case may be,
so you're ready for this upcoming weekend.
We'll start with, let's see,
we'll start with the amount of noise
that you would experience with setting off firecrackers
or shooting guns and things of the like.
Once you start looking at noise exposure,
you're looking at two different dimensions.
You're looking at intensity of the sound, so how loud it is,
and then you're looking at the duration of sound,
so how long you're exposed to that sound.
And if you look at some of the guidelines
that are out there for OSHA and NIOSH,
these are safety organizations to ensure
that employees inside of different industries are protected.
And so they have these guidelines,
and so I believe with OSHA, it is you can be exposed
to a 90 decibel sound for up to eight hours,
and you're okay, but anything beyond that you really need
to be protecting your hearing in order
to prevent yourself from experiencing hearing loss.
And each time that you go up five decibels you cut
that time in half.
So if we're doing some math here,
if you start off at 90 decibels, and then you go up
in exposure intensity by five decibels,
it cuts your time in half from eight hours to four hours.
Then if you go from 95 to 100 decibels,
you're cutting your time in half again,
which means you're going from four hours down to two hours,
and it keeps going like that until ultimately
all it takes it an instantaneous exposure to a loud sound
and then you run the risk for hearing damage.
The NIOSH guidelines are more strict than that,
so I believe they start at 85 decibels
for eight hours, and then when up three decibels
that cuts your time in half.
So you go from 85 to 88, that cuts you down
from eight hours to four hours, so on, so forth.
So, you really have to keep these things in mind,
you gotta think about noise in terms
of duration and intensity.
So, when it comes down to doing impact sounds like these,
when you start looking at the loudest firecrackers
and you know, gunshots and things like that,
you start looking, you're getting
into like 120 decibels plus,
and once you start getting into that range,
you start running into this risk of instantaneous,
permanent damage to your hearing,
so you really have to do something to protect yourself.
And I've seen too many people, I mean,
every single week I see people in my clinic
who experience hearing loss due to noise exposure,
and we can usually see it in an audiogram fairly easily.
They have what we call a noise notch,
which is a hearing loss, usually around 3,000,
4,000, maybe even 6,000 hertz,
and then everywhere else is actually pretty good,
or at least better than that little cutout
in damage that we see in their outer hair cells
inside of their cochlear.
So, what I say is,
the complexities of treating hearing loss,
you can do it well, however,
the easiest way to treat hearing loss
is to never experience hearing loss at all.
And so if you can remove noise as a factor
for causing additional hearing loss,
then why wouldn't you wanna do that instead of having
to go through all the different pain in the butt treatments
that you would have to go through for the rest of your life?
So, take that into consideration before you go out
and do anything noisy.
So, the last thing that I'll talk about here,
before we get to go have some fun,
is the different types of hearing protection
and how you should actually be utilizing them.
The 3M Classic foam hearing protector,
so there's a variety of different hearing proctors
out there, you have Howard Leight,
which is a really good company as well.
But these 3M Classics are pretty much
the traditional ones that you would see,
they're just those yellow foamies that what you do
is you roll them up and these have a noise reduction rating,
so NRR, anytime that you're looking at a hearing protector,
you wanna make sure that it has pretty high NRR value.
So these have a NRR of 29 decibels,
which means that they are going to be providing you
with a substantial amount of protection,
as long as you insert them into your ear canals correctly.
The higher the number, the better,
and the better and the deeper you insert them
into your ear canal, the better.
When I was doing my research project
at University if Illinois, we identified, of course,
and this has been confirmed by other studies as well,
is that when you insert these further into your ear canal
it dramatically improves the protection value of them,
because if you end up kind of fitting them
and they're just kinda like sticking out of ears like that,
that's providing you virtually no protection.
So what you do is you roll it up really, really slim
in your fingers, and then you kind of
you take your ear and you pull
it back to open up your ear canal,
and then you work that down into your ear canal,
and I try to get it about 3/4 of the way into my ear canal,
and just enough space for me to pinch it and hold onto it,
and then you kind of hold it there and wait for it to expand
a little bit so it doesn't expand out of your ear,
it kind of just expands where you want it to to stay.
And I can already tell that this is dropping off
the sound of my voice pretty substantially now.
And so that is roughly what it looks like in there,
if you can see it, anyway.
So, that would give you a noise reduction rating of 29,
there is a correction factor,
so you don't actually get the full 29 dB of protection here,
and you can look up the correction factors online,
I won't bore you with that right now,
but the other thing that I like to do
is actually double protect.
And so, I like to use my Peltor Sport Tactical 500s,
and the reason I like these is because you
can actually listen to music through them at the same time
that you're protecting your hearing,
as long as you play it as a reasonable level.
But when you put these on over top of,
this is very weird, it's hard to talk when these are on,
but nonetheless, when you put these over top
of a pair of foam hearing protectors inside your ear canal,
it adds another five decibels of protection.
So I think these have around a NRR value of 26,
but you don't add the 29 to the 26,
that's not how it works.
So you basically figure that you add about five decibels
of additional protection on top of the foam protectors
that you're wearing, and it makes a huge difference.
So if you're gonna go out and do things,
shooting firecrackers, shooting guns,
whatever the case may be, you really wanna make sure
you're protecting yourself as much as possible.
Now, there is one other type of hearing protector,
generally, I mean you have the custom molded ones as well.
So different companies, you can either get a silicone mold
or you can get an electronic protector like these,
and these are custom molded for your ears.
What I would say is is that depending on your situation,
you may opt to go with a customer protector
versus a foam protector or a set of earmuffs,
but you typically do not get the same amount of protection
out of a product like this, so keep that in mind.
If your ultimate goal is
to maximize your hearing protection,
then make sure that you go with a foam plug
and then you use earmuffs on top of that.
Okay, so, enough of me talking right now,
what do you say we actually go blow some stuff up?
(fireworks hissing)
(fireworks crackling)
(fireworks exploding)
(Cliff laughing)
(fireworks crackling)
(fireworks exploding)
(fireworks crackling)
(fireworks exploding)
(Cliff laughing)
All right guys, I hope you enjoyed the video,
that was our little 4th of July celebration.
Make sure that you stay safe,
but by all means, have fun,
and I'll see you next week.
(upbeat music)