Health Report: A word in your ear
Almost nine million people in the UK suffer from deafness or hearing loss, in many cases without any obvious cause. We take a look at just how our day-to-day lives could be causing some of these problems and what we can do to help ourselves.
Two years ago, Pam Brown,
from Cheshire, woke up one morning and found that her life had
changed overnight. She couldn't hear a thing in her left ear,
and accompanying the loss of sound was a constant, high pitched
ringing - tinnitus. For anyone, this would have been traumatic, but
Pam had also suffered limited hearing in her right ear since her
mid-20s.
"The initial hearing loss was due to measles, which I had as a baby," explains Pam. "I was used to it, and was able to enjoy work and a social life. But the sudden hearing loss in my left ear, along with the tinnitus, was different. It's had a dramatic impact on everything I do, leaving me feeling isolated and stressed."
Pam is a nurse, but had to move from the patient-focussed work she loved and into admissions. "I have had to give up a lot in the last two years - even meeting my friends for coffee was proving too difficult," she says. "When my children grew up and left home I'd joined a choir, but managed to take part in just one concert before my hearing loss."
Pam's frustration is clear because nobody can explain her persistent tinnitus - a ringing and buzzing in the ears - or why her hearing has vanished. Perhaps she was unlucky, but Pam is one of a growing number of people who are suffering from unexpected hearing loss, often as a result of their day-to-day lives.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a huge 20 per cent of Europeans are exposed to health-damaging noise levels daily. "While almost everyone is exposed to too much noise, it has been dismissed as an inevitable fact of urban life and hasn't been targeted and controlled," says Rokho Kim, who led the research for the WHO's European office. "But, just like air pollution and toxic chemicals, noise is an environmental health hazard."
According to the UK Health and Safety Executive, the maximum noise level we should be exposed to is 80 decibels, yet we're regularly in contact with up to 120 decibels from music, film, planes or industry.
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