#hearing protection

[themadbutcher]

[pick-an-item-poll]

Pick an Item: My Fave Earplugs*

Loop Quiet 1

East Royal (or what I call them: Magicical Girl earplugs)

Voting ended onAug 5

*that are discontinued/I can't find anywhere right now (also why I had to take my own picture)

[ebulatheduck]

forgot my earplugs on my desk at home today

wish me luck for the hearing damage that playing piccolo without hearing protection is gonna cause me

[themadkiing]

Photo by Courtland Dunstan

[andmaybegayer]

going to the concert and decided to put my earplugs in on the metro and god damn I have got to get some noise cancelling earphones. This is so much better. The metro isn't intolerably loud but it is very loud.

[floridaboiler]

[themogaidragon]

Autism And ADHD + Hearing Protection & Sunglasses User

Everyone who is autistic + ADHD/ADD and needs to wear sunglasses + hearing protection can use this flag!

Original autism + ADHD flag made by @autistic-trans.

Hearing protection and sunglasses user symbol made by @themogaidragon (aka me).

[kuiperblog]

Flying sucks

First, the actionable part: you may find yourself at some point this December trapped on an airplane filled with those infernal screens that constantly play ads on loop for the entire duration of the flight, begging you to insert your credit card to watch a movie or something:

You can, in nearly every case, disable these screens by repeatedly mashing the “reduce brightness” button on your armrest until it gets to 0, at which point the screen turns off. (In cases where there isn’t a screen brightness setting, the same can usually be accomplished by use of the “reduce volume” button.) The beginning-of-flight safety video overrides this, but you can avoid spending several hours with your face several inches away from a screen playing movie trailers on loop. I recommend sharing this information with your seatmates if they’re not making use of the screen, as there’s a high probability they’ll be appreciative to know about it; every time I’ve seen someone start the flight by pulling out a book, I’ve told them about how to turn off the screen, and invariably their response is a mix of relief and gratitude.

With that “life pro tip” out of the way, onto the gripe-posting proper:

While I’ve spent most of the past 2 years in hermit mode, I enjoy being exposed to new locales and over the course of my lifetime have resided in 3 different continents. (For one glorious chapter of my life, I spent several consecutive Q1′s in Australia, dodging winter in the northern hemisphere and living the dream of experiencing an almost-perpetual summer. This is less the result of genius planning on my part, and more a result of the fact that the Australian government wouldn’t approve a visa for longer than 3 consecutive months.)  So as you might imagine, I have spent quite a bit of time on airplanes.

I find that flying in airplanes sucks for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with the conditions of sitting in coach, because no matter how spacious your seat is, there’s no getting around the fact that the air pressure in the cabin is around 4-5 psi, compared to the ~14.7 psi that I’m used to back on the ground. Even high altitude cities like Denver that are famous for having “low air pressure” are around 12.4 psi, and after you spend a few weeks living in a city at that elevation, your body acclimates (I base this statement on having spent over a year of my life living in Boulder, which is actually slightly more elevated than Denver).

The discomfort of changes in pressure (to abnormally low levels) is most directly manifest in the way that your ears “pop,” to which the commonly suggested remedy is that you chew gum, suck on hard candy, or “blow your nose while pinching your nose shut”, which deals with one symptom of the rapid change in air pressure by helping to clear your ear passageway, but doesn’t really do much for the sinuses, nor does it really do much to alleviate the fact that your body is experiencing conditions that it wasn’t really designed for. (Also, there’s the fact that even after the pressure change is over, inflamed sinuses don’t just automatically go back to feeling normal and comfortable.)  I’m not arthritic, but from what I hear, the pressure issues manifest in all sorts of awful ways for people who have joint fluid issues.

There’s also the fact that airplane engines and air flow (and thus, airplane cabins) are really freaking loud, which you might not immediately register since it’s all just a dull drone and our bodies are pretty good at adapting to whatever new “normal” we’re thrust into, but you’ve definitely noticed the loudness of airplanes if you’ve ever put in your earbuds and tried to to listen to music on an airplane, because you have to crank the volume way up to hear anything above the sound of the plane. The volume level inside of airline cabins is around 80 dB, (for comparison, 60 db is an estimate for the typical “office” environment), while 85 db is the point at which OSHA legally mandates that employers provide workers with hearing protection equipment. (The decibel scale is logarithmic.) Also, that 80 dB cabin volume is an approximated average, I’m sure that some aircraft are louder than average, and some parts of the cabin are louder than average depending on how close you are to the engine, and just because OSHA doesn’t legally mandate hearing protection for people spending 6+ hours in a 80 dB environment doesn’t mean it isn’t extremely unpleasant!

The loudness of airline cabins can actually be somewhat mitigated; I couldn’t tell you what brand I wear (I bought the cheapest thing I could find that had good reviews), but if you do an Amazon product search for “ear muffs hearing protection” or “ear muffs noise reduction” you’ll turn up plenty of results for hearing protection devices that look like this and are priced for ~$20 or less:

(One immediate way that the noise dampening manifests: you can wear your earbuds underneath them, and hear your music/podcasts/audiobooks just fine at “normal” volumes.)

In my experience, while these devices do a great job of reducing the volume of lower-frequency sounds (like the thrum of jet engines), they don’t block out higher-frequency noises, like the sound of crying babies. But I’m fine with listening to crying babies on airplanes, because babies who cry on airplanes are my homies, because they, like me, are intensely aware of the fact that human bodies were not designed to spend hours sitting in a cabin subjected to pressure of <5 PSI and volume levels upwards of 80 dB. Given the immense discomfort that this produces, and the lack of experience that babies have with dealing with that level of prolonged discomfort, crying is the most natural reaction a human could have, and I would never begrudge them for loudly protesting that their bodies are being overwhelmed with unfamiliar physical sensations, all of which are telling them “the world isn’t supposed to be like this! your body was not intended to exist in circumstances like the ones you’re currently experiencing, and your tiny little baby ears are ever so fragile!” Also, while I can take comfort in knowing that this will all be over soon, babies don’t have that assurance! For all they know, this could be the new normal! As far as I’m concerned, any time a baby manages to make it through a flight without bawling for the entire duration, it is a heroic accomplishment and far more than could ever be expected of them.