Noise Induced Hearing loss can lead to hearing, other health and safety problems that can influence your day-to-day living
Knowing about these is important for you to make decisions about your hearing health.
Noise can cause hearing and other health problems
-
Repeated exposures worsen early stages of hearing loss
-
Ringing in the ears (tinnitus)
-
Sleep disturbances, sometimes due to tinnitus
-
Fatigue from trying to hear and from disturbed sleep
-
Stress due to hearing loss
-
Less family, social, professional engagements
-
Lower doctor visits
-
High blood pressure and heart diseases due to stress and less health checkups
-
Harm pregnancy and developing baby due to stress
Lower balance and situational awareness
-
Brain gets incomplete information on head position with respect to gravity
-
Brain also gets incomplete information on the type of sound, direction and distance of sound
-
This harms understanding of environmental surroundings and changes within them
​
Vertigo or dizziness
-
Due to vestibular disorders
-
Can last for few seconds, minutes to hours or for many days
-
Can be triggered by changes in head position, loud noise
​
More falls
-
Disturbed situational awareness of what is happening around a person including signals, alarms, verbal warnings
-
Fatigue and tiredness due to the brain overworking to hear
-
Made worse if combined with vision problems
-
Made worse if muscle strength is weak
​
For those with hearing loss
Lowering harmful noise exposures prevents hearing loss and
-
Less stress and fatigue
-
Increased productivity and better morale
-
Improved work, social, family relationships
-
Improved career and earnings
-
Improved quality of life
3 times
Higher chances of falling
17%
Increase in emergency visits
44%
Increase in hospital readmission
2.5
Days longer hospital stays
47%
Increase in hospital admissions