Buccaneers

Do you know the high pitched sound a radio makes when it's not quite tuned to a station? The high pitched noise that, in its annoyance, takes you directly to the source to twiddle the knobs?

Well here's the bad news. If you don't protect your ears, you'll have that sound in your ears all the time, and with an auto control that turns the volume up when you're stressed and when you're in a quiet place, and at nights when you are trying to go to sleep.

The condition is called tinnitus. There is no cure. The good news, it's preventable!

Please, you younger indestructable blokes, wear hearing protection, and more importantly, particularly the older members, make sure you have the right equipment to allow that little guy, who loves to help grandpa, to safely work in your shop.

I used to think that eye damage would be terrible, "if I was blind I could not check out the girls!" Having tinnitus is worse. A bit like standing in a cesspool up to your chin and hoping no one makes waves.

Glenn

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In Jus Voco Spurius

Reply to
Glenn Cramond
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And knowing they will. Hearing protection is good.

Trouble is, some of your young blokes are already blasting their eardrums as badly, possibly worse, with the loudness of the music they listen to.

Charlie Self

Facts are stupid things. Ronald Reagan

Reply to
Charlie Self

*Turns up Fear Factory* ;-)

Tim

-- In the immortal words of Ned Flanders: "No foot longs!" Website @

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Reply to
Tim Williams

I may suggest that you may want to check with the labor and industries or workers compensation boards in the state where you live or work.

I had a 44% hearing loss. It was determined that it was not medical. The state will more than likely ask for every employer from 16 as was my case, Social security can provide this info.

The state will try to get the employers ins to pay a prorate share .

Anyway the state just provided two in the ear hearing aids ($3,100 ) saw the bill . they also provide maintenance for life and batteries for life. I use a number 13 and get a box of 40 went I need them . Just call the hearing aid center who fitted me and they mail another box to you.

Then after all of that they make a $ settlement with you. All of this is in washington state. Some other states may have different plans.

I mention all of this so that if someone has really lost hearing from their work and it can be medically checked the you are entitled to get some help. And if this will help just one person then it is well worth the effort to try and get all the help you can. This is not welfare. This is insurance that the employer paid and you paid .

When you cannot hear the words spoken to you, it is a bummer. after a short time you get PO. Get help ask your doctor or check with a real hearing aid store. They were the ones who told me about this.

Reply to
O D

Glenn's right. Protect your ears. I'm 44, my ears have rung steady since I was about 37. Probably partially due to damage done in High School and College (very loud bands), and to a lot of hammering in the last ~28 years some of which was done without plugs or muffs. Protect your ears.

I miss silence. I don't have tinnitus as bad as some, but it's depressing as hell if I dwell on it. Mostly I get to forget about it by being busy. For the most part, tinnitus is as permanent as an amputation. Protect your ears.

If I'm hammering, or grinding, I find that I can do a better job if I'm wearing ear protection... I can hear better what the grinder is doing and I can hit the metal harder with the hammer because it doesn't hurt me to do so. Protect your ears.

There's probably some health hazard to doing this, but I've never had a problem: An excellent makeshift earplug is a square of toilet paper accordion-folded (not rolled) to about the size of a cigarette filter, placed gently in the ear canal, then soaked with (clean) water. Leave enough paper sticking out so you can get it out.

YMMV. Your ears are not shaped like mine. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a lawyer. Don't be stupid.

Protect your ears.

If you try to 'reply' to this message without fixing the dot, your reply will bounce. See below.

-- Carl West snipped-for-privacy@comcast.net

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Reply to
Carl West

Charlie wrote

Agree wholeheartedly Charlie.

Beej wrote I was also a jet engine mechanic in

Agree again Beejay, yours sounds worse than mine but just proves I'm older than you, got mine from Vampires and Sabres! I think the bearing whine was the thing that did it to me. As if Merlins and radial wasps weren't bad enough.

Glenn

Reply to
Glenn Cramond

Nowadays, a good set of 25dB or better ear muffs is less than $20, so there's no reason not to have them on hand. Our washer and dryer is in "my" shop, so I keep an extra set for my wife when she needs to be there while the tools are on.

An extra set is also very good to have when a helper is required. I've always offered them to helpers, and when I only had one set, _I_ had to suffer!

I really like my Peltors with the AM/FM radio in them. They get used for mowing, auto races, the shop, or when my wife is on a tear.

They're so comfortable, I wear them most of the time I'm in the shop. With two sets of rechargeable batteries, I can always have a charged set ready, without breaking the bank on alkalines.

Barry

Reply to
B a r r y B u r k e J r .

Glenn Cramond states:

I've been told that some of these kids now drive with ear plugs in and speakers blasting. I'm about to start a movement that will make it illegal for ANYONE to play an in-vehicle stereo loud enough to be heard 2' beyond the vehicle. (Joke there: I don't have time.) But the real stunner came last summer when I looked to see WTF was making so much noise...house felt like it was moving in and out...and saw 2 kids at the next-door-neighbor's house (well, at the curb), with their heads in the open trunk of a nasty looking brown car. It turns out, the speakers were in the trunk. It was turned up so far it was making my house dance, and the door panels in the car sounded like a regiment of garbage cans being beat upon by a division of Coke bottles (reference is to the opening scene of Jack Webb's "The DI").

There has to be some sort of allure to this beyond absolutely appalling stupidity, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out. Attention getting? If this builds self-esteem, I feel sorry for these kids now, and sorrier for the world when they grow up.

Didn't get close enough to Brit technology...hanging around with a couple Royal Marines for a weekend was enough! But we had our share of supercharged HUS-1s (helichoppers for those who don't know) running up on the flight line as we checked out instruments. Inside the hangers, we got the echoes from the flight line. There was a moderate amount of gunfire annually, too. If anyone you know wants to fire 500 rounds of .30-06 ammo in a single day, tell them a ball of cotton in each ear is simply not enough. Not too long after I got out of the Marines, I started covering motocross races for varioius magazines. Getting the results and the shots, especially at the start line, was deafening in those days of shrieking 2 strokes. After that, it was my own machinery, then woodworking jumped all the way into the fray, though I'd had my share of that in a small altar factory when I was 16-17. In those days, sound was unmuffled and dust nicely distributed in the air, and no one though much about either.

Charlie Self

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom. Stephen Vincent Benet

Reply to
Charlie Self

I took a Smith & Wesson .357 magnum to the range one day in 1964. Fired 5 shots without ear protection. The ringing hasn't stopped since. But I've learned to live with it. Don't hear the telephone or doorbell, but the dog barks to alert me. But it's not as bad as going blind. I do wear ear protection when using the chain saw or the thickness planer, and I don't shoot anymore. harrym

Reply to
HarryM

It MIGHT be legal, and even safe. I would check into it.

I say it might be safe because I ride a motorcycle and wear hearing protection - ear plugs inside my helmet. The prolonged high-pitched wind noise is one of the most damaging frequencies for your ears. It also drowns out other noises. I find that when I wear ear plugs I can actually hear most sounds BETTER (my own engine, car horns, etc). Ear plugs tend to block out more of the higher pitched sounds (which are the most damaging) and let through the lower pitched sounds (horns). And even though sirens are high pitched, they are usually loud enough that I don't have any problem hearing them through the ear plugs.

The ear plugs have the added benefit of making me feel warmer (no, really!). It seems that on chilly days, the sound of the wind has the psychological effect of making it feel even colder. I know it's all in my head, but that's were it really counts!

-Chris

Reply to
Chris

Well, it isn't always preventable. Exposure to loud noises is thought to be one way to get it, or at least aggravate it, but there are other causes. Severe ear infection as a child is one common cause, as are high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.

I've suffered with it most of my life. My hearing range still tests very good, even in the higher registers, but that damn ringing never stops. I usually mentally tune it out and don't even think about it, but since starting reading this thread, it has been in the front of my consciousness, and annoying as hell.

The most popular belief about tinnitus is that it is due to damaged auditory nerves. But I recently read a report where researchers placed a sensitive microphone in the ear canal of a sufferer and actually recorded the sound. Their theory is that it is a mechanical problem in the ear which actually generates the noise. If they're right, it may be possible some day to surgically repair the problem and get rid of the ringing.

Gary

Reply to
Gary Coffman

I swear mine is so loud I'm surprised it doesn't keep my wife awake. In my case I have Meniers which is another of those things they don't know the cause or any cure. The dizzy spells decrease as the hearing goes. I'm now almost completely deaf in my left ear but still have the ringing.

Stuart Johnson Red Oak, Texas

Reply to
Stuart Johnson

On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 11:06:46 GMT, B a r r y B u r k e J r . pixelated:

Earplugs are a buck or two, decent (albeit plastic) earmuffs are $3.97 at HFT, and the combo really cuts down the noise if you need it to. HFT had a sale on their safety equipment a year ago so I picked up a couple more sets of muffs, goggles, and dust masks for $3 a pop. I now keep one set of muffs in the mower shed.

Toilet paper makes fine earplugs in a pinch.

"Be the change you want to see in the world." --Mahatma Gandhi - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

I did, actually. Spent a couple hours surfing yesterday, and could neither confirm nor deny. The FMCSA web site was unavailable. Sometimes things that are unavailable become so eventually, and some sites just never, ever work for me. grizzly.com for example, *always* times out. Something with my firewall maybe. No clue.

I can't hear sirens anyway. Trucks are LOUD.

Reply to
Silvan

Yeah, I can relate to that one too. Took my .45 ACP to the range one day. Forgot my ears. The range is a good distance away, so I figured "it won't hurt this one time."

I fired off one shot and came home. The ringing from that one *did* stop though. Or at least faded to practically nothing. I found it hard to believe that people used to shoot those damn things all day long in an age before anyone had even invented hearing protectors.

Really drives home the point of what total BS movies like Die Hard are. Shooting inside an HVAC duct while talking on a radio. Yeah right.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE did you say something?

Reply to
Silvan

Well, hell. Bruce Willis as Super Stud Hero?

Charlie Self

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom. Stephen Vincent Benet

Reply to
Charlie Self

hehehehe im investing all my money in hearing aid stocks! in a few years ill be RICH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! george

Reply to
george

Yeah, true enough. True enough.

Reply to
Silvan

Heh?!? Whadidyasay?!? Hold on...let me turn down the Metallica.

Reply to
TexasFireGuy

Be careful--there's way more than one forme of tinnitus. I had "pulsitile tinnitus" in both ears (worse in the right--the left ringing tended to mask the pulse) to the point where I only needed a watch to get my pulse. After a bunch of tests, the closest guess was otosclerosis, where the stirrup bone (stapes for the latinophiles) is frozen to the middle ear by a spongy to hard bone mass. An interesting bit of microsurgery can clean things up, and I had to take my pulse the normal way.

Turns out the pulsitile tinnitus was a combination of a really good bone-to ear connectiuon, and the fact that external sounds were getting grounded out. Can't remember if the pulse came back the two times my left ear prothesis failed--if you are allergic to stainless--actually nickle--*tell the docs and make them research it*. Most people think that nickle allergy is strictly a skin condition, but I have the remnants of the anvil bone and a stainless implant to tell me otherwise. Titanium works OK (when installed correctly--failure number 1), as does the plastic/ceramic stuff they use when the middle ear bonework needs a forklift upgrade.

Pete Brooks

Reply to
pete brooks

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