- [Voiceover] Welcome everyone to Wednesday Nite at the Lab .
I'm Tom Zinnen I work at the UW-Madison
biotechnology center, I also work for UW-Extension,
Cooperative Extension and on behalf of those folks
and other co-organizers, Wisconsin Public Television,
Wisconsin Alumni Association and the UW-Madison
Science Alliance.
Thanks again for coming to Wednesday Nite the Lab.
We do this every Wednesday night, 50 times a year.
Tonight it's my pleasure to introduce three people who are
gonna talk about dealing with rural noise and protecting
your hearing.
The first person is Tim Kuckuk, he grew up in Plymouth,
Wisconsin and went to UW Oshkosh where he got a degree
in music.
He plays trombone, he's now getting his doctorate of
audiology here at UW-Madison.
The second speaker is Rachel Jocewicz and she's from
De Pere, Wisconsin.
Went undergrad here, studied three things that I can't
remember, Spanish, biology, and disorders.
I remembered the disorders part.
She's also getting her doctorate in audiology and
the lead-off speaker is gonna be Melanie Buhr-Lawler.
She's from Viroqua, she went to Viroqua high school,
went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison here
for bachelors, went to University of Iowa for masters,
and then got her doctorate of audiology at the
University of Florida in Gainesville.
So, please join me in welcoming the three of them.
They're gonna be talking about horsepower and hearing,
taking on rural noise.
[audience applauding]
- Thank you.
- All right, I want to start tonight by saying that every one
of us, every one of us in this room is surrounded by
a noisy, noisy world.
And the word "noise", itself, has a couple of definitions.
The first definition of noise is a sound that's unpleasant,
a sound that you just don't want to be around.
And the second definition of noise and it's actually
the definition that I prefer, it's any sound that someone
or something makes.
And I would like to argue tonight that all of us are
surrounded by many, many noises in our daily lives.
All of the time.
And some of those noises are wanted, and some of them
are unpleasant or unwanted.
So, in our noisy world we drive in cars and walk down
the street.
There's a lot of construction this time or year.
We fly on airplanes, we eat out at restaurants,
we use hair dryers or common appliances around our homes.
We go to sporting events, we mow our lawns,
we listen to lots of music, classical music, rock music.
We are surrounded by a cacophony of sound all the time.
So tonight we are going to touch on some really real
reasons why I feel that all of us should care
about the noise in the world around us.
And I'm going to talk about some projects that I and the
other members of the audiology department here on campus,
and we're part of the Department of Communication Science
and Disorders.
Some projects that we're doing to try to spread the word
about concerns about noise and noise-induced hearing loss
within our community here and across the state of Wisconsin.
So, other than being an annoyance to experience,
why do we even care about noise levels in the world?
Well, we know that there are a lot of effects of noise
exposure.
The primary effects of noise exposure are noise-induced
hearing loss and that type of hearing loss, it can be
temporary or permanent, and it can include acoustic trauma
to the ear and tinnitus.
And that's another word for ringing in the ears.
The focus of this talk today is going to be on the primary
effects of noise exposure and how to prevent them.
And so we're going to come back to those in a few minutes.
But, I also want to mention that noise exposure can cause
some other real, real significant problems
in our lives.
So another issue is that noise exposure can cause difficulty
with communication and performance.
Either in the work place, or at play.
Noise exposure can cause annoyance.
It can cause difficulty concentrating.
If you can imagine some of those noises that we just heard,
it's hard to concentrate when you're listening to
a jack hammer in the background.
It can cause absenteeism from the workplace.
It can cause accidents, and it also can cause the sensation
of isolation.
Noise exposure also has been linked to more global,
physiologic and mental effects.
So, studies show that noise exposure can cause increased
stress, it can cause muscle tension, it can cause ulcers,
it can actually increase our blood pressure,
and it can cause hypertension.
Hearing loss, itself, has been shown very recently
to be linked to depression.
And some recent studies have shown that untreated hearing
loss over a period of years is actually associated with
an increase in dementia.
So all of the effects that I just described, the primary
effects of tinnitus, the communication and perfomance
effects, and those overall effects on our minds and bodies,
they can be caused by prolonged noise exposure,
but they can also be caused, in some instances,
to very brief periods of noise exposure.
And what really speaks to me about all of this is that
these are issues that are very significant in people's lives
and they are completely preventable.
So, we are going to spend some time talking about those
issues and what causes them in our bodies, our physiology.
But first I want to say a few words about how loud
is too loud?
So, the fact behind loud sound is that whether it is
something that's wanted.
[orchestral music]
Or something that's unwanted.
[jackhammer hammering]
Like that jackhammer, again.
Is that if you're exposed to enough of that sound over time,
or even if you're exposed one time to a very loud level,
it can do permanent damage to your auditory system.
And our auditory system is a very crucial component in
our ability to connect with other people.
So I want to just give a brief overview of what sound
levels are safe to listen to and what can be damaging
to our auditory systems.
And in order to know and understand safe
listening levels.
I just want to say a few words about the decibel.
Because that's the unit of measure.
So the decibel is the unit of measurement that's used to
quantify the intensity of sound.
Decibels are quantified on a logarithmic scale
and so, they are not linear.
An increase in 10 decibels actually means a change in
sound power by a factor of 10.
So, how many decibels of sound exposure is too much for us?
Fortunately for me, there's been a lot of work done on this.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration,
they are the government, the federal body that
governs safety in the workplace.
They've done a lot of work on this topic.
And also the National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health, that would be NIOSH and the other one is OSHA.
They have helped defined safe listening levels in the
workplace, and those can be more generalized to
the general listening experience.
So, as I eluded to before, there are actually two
factors that determine risk from noise exposure.
The first is the length of time you're exposed to a
certain sound.
And the second is the intensity of the noise.
So you could be exposed to a very loud sound for a very
short period of time and do the same amount of damage
as being exposed to a softer sound for an extended
period of time.
It's called the time intensity trade-off.
And OSHA actually gives a permissible noise exposure
level and that is 90 decibels.
That's kind of OSHA's benchmark.
So, if you are in a 90 decibel sound level for an eight
hour day in the workplace, it is federally mandated,
if you're a workplace that's covered by OSHA,
and not all of them are, it's federally mandated that you
are offered, and hopefully you are wearing,
hearing protection.
There's also a 5 dB time intensity trade-off.
So, if you increase that sound level to 95 decibels,
your time that you can spend in that level
of noise is cut in half.
So at 95 decibels you can only be in it for four hours,
at 100 decibels, two hours, and so on.
And OSHA's criteria is actually less strict than the NIOSH
criteria and we, in this profession, and in the hearing
sciences we tend to side more with NIOSH.
They're a little more conservative.
They have a three decibel time intensity trade-off
and they tell us that people should be wearing
hearing protection at slightly softer levels.
But just for the sake of simplicity, I'm gonna stick with
OSHA and this is an OSHA graph I'm using here
and I want to show some every day sounds on this chart.
So we have decibels, that unit of measure across the bar
from left to right, soft to very, very loud.
So a refrigerator hum comes in around 45 decibels.
That's manageable, a lot of us are experiencing sounds
like that even right now and not even noticing them.
Average conversation, 60 decibels.
Traffic noise comes in at 85 decibels, so you're starting
to get louder.
And it obviously depends on what type of traffic,
but we're starting to get some increases in sound level now.
The noise of a motorcycle, 95 decibels and I just found
a study, today, that shows peak levels of motorcycle noise
to go all the way up to 128 decibels.
So those really loud engines that you hear can get even
louder than this.
Tractor noise, and this is going to come in to play
in a few minutes, 100 decibels.
So that's the same as working with tools in a wood shop.
We're starting to get very loud.
If you have a hobby and you work in your wood shop,
and that was actually your job and you worked in a factory
at that level, OSHA would be saying, your employer would be
mandated by OSHA that you would be wearing hearing
protection, so hopefully that is a situation where people
are thinking about ear plugs or ear muffs to protect
themselves.
This was one I find really interesting.
MP3 players at peak volume are 105 decibels.
And that is something that many, many young people
are listening to for extended periods of time every day.
And sometimes at that peak volume level.
And what is happening is we're starting to see an noise
induced hearing loss epidemic in the younger population
that's starting to mimic what was showing up for people
who had worked in factories their whole lives.
So we're starting to see a shift in noise-induced hearing
loss to the youth of today.
And people-- we're doing it to ourselves.
And so it's something that I'm going to talk about later,
we're trying to spread the word on this topic as well.
A rock concert, 110 decibels, chainsaw, the same level.
A siren, 120.
And then with the firecracker we have the fourth of July
coming up soon, so stay a little ways away from those
or use your ear plugs, we're reaching the threshold of pain.
And that's the same for firearms, too.
So some of these are noises that we willingly welcome
into our lives.
But, many of these we would consider somewhat unpleasant.
But I want to emphasize the fact that there are some
sounds in our world that we are welcoming
that we may not realized could actually, potentially,
damage our auditory systems.
So, at close range, the instruments in the symphony
can measure anywhere from 85 to 102 decibels.
The piccolo is actually the loudest one,
if you can believe it, at the ear level.
Some recent research has been coming out on the noise
levels in NFL stadiums and we are seeing that they are
very loud, just from crowd noise alone.
So 95 to 105 decibels.
And along those lines, a couple years ago we had a Au.D.
student working on a research project and she was looking
at noise levels and hearing loss in sporting stadiums
around this area, and she measured levels in
Camp Randal and I believe there were about 80,000 people
in attendance that day.
It was a nice, lovely October day and she was measuring
levels of 96 decibels from the crowd noise there.
And I just want to point out, I'm foreshadowing,
that area that you see pop up, that 126 decibels is the
level that we measured last weekend at a tractor pull
that we went to here in the state.
So that last slide illustrated the wide variety of sounds
in the world around us.
There's a lot of different sound levels.
And as we saw there's things like classical music,
or even rural noise like tractors that can damage
our hearing.
And I'm an audiologist, by profession,
and as an audiologist I'm really interested in hearing
and hearing loss and in hearing loss prevention.
We call that hearing conservation.
So if I use that term, that's what I'm talking about.
I became particularly interested in hearing conservation
because I've been working clinically my whole career
and I have seen many, many people with hearing loss
caused by noise exposure.
And this type of hearing loss can be prevented.
And so that is one of the reasons I became interested in
this type of, this part of our field.
I've worked in both rural and urban areas professionally.
And when I moved back to Wisconsin about four
and a half years ago to take the position I have now
at the University, I started thinking a lot about rural
noise in Wisconsin and across America.
And the reason for that is because I grew on my family's
dairy farm in Viroqua, as Tom said, and my father is still
a dairy farmer.
And it's very beautiful and bucolic and pastoral
in the country, but sometimes this very beautiful calm
area can be extremely noisy.
Noise is just part of that culture and it's something
that is accepted and not really thought about.
At least in my background and the background of the
people around me growing up.
So, that puts farmers and other rural workers at risk
for noise-induced hearing loss.
But farmers, unlike a lot of the other groups out there
with noise in the workplace, are not necessarily regulated
by OSHA.
So OSHA doesn't necessarily apply to small farmers
like my father.
And further, as I mentioned, there's often the culture
or the mindset that the use of hearing protection is just
not really necessary.
And it's not just farmers with unexpected noise exposure,
the same applies to classical musicians like that
piccolo player or anyone using an MP3 player.
So, we're going to dive more into noise exposure,
hearing conservation projects that we've done
across this state in a few moments.
And ways we're trying to change that culture
and help prevent hearing loss.
But first I'm going to turn it over to Rachel Jocewicz
and she is going to give us some background on our amazing,
our complex, and our very vulnerable auditory systems.
- Thank you Dr. Buhr-Lawler.
Am I, do I sound okay?
So, like Dr. Buhr-Lawler mentioned,
it's probably clear by now that our ears are vulnerable
to loud sounds.
But to truly understand why that is, and the consequences
of hearing loss, we first kind of have to understand
how the normal, healthy, typical ear works.
So, this is a diagram of a model ear.
Showcasing the way we like to split it up.
We often talk about the outer ear, the middle ear,
and the inner ear.
And the only thing that's missing that's actually very
important is our brain.
But, that doesn't fall so much into the conversation
about noise exposure.
And, our ears, when functioning at maximal capacity,
are really amazing, you know.
Some of us can probably tell the difference between the
first violins and the second violins in that symphony.
We can accurately localize a sound to the nearest
single angular degree.
It is truly amazing and what we're gonna talk a little
bit about the functions of those three different parts
that we saw on this diagram.
So the first is the outer ear.
And you might notice, you probably notice all your life,
your outer ear has lots of folds and bumps and ridges.
But, if you've ever wondered why that might be,
part of that reason is localization.
So we use those folds to help us localize an elevation.
So, if we didn't have any pinna's, any outer ears,
we could still tell where a sound is coming from,
from left to right, but we wouldn't be able to tell
if it was coming from up or down or from directly in front
or directly behind.
It also helps us amplify sounds.
So, as sound energy travels through the air,
it spreads out a larger funnel, a larger ear collects
more of that energy and actually amplifies the sound
by about a factor of three.
Traveling down the outer eat a little bit is the ear canal.
And that serves the purpose of amplification as well
because of the way it acts like a resonating tube.
It also serves the important function of protection
of your delicate ear drum or tympanic membrane
because of the way it is shaped.
It's shaped like an S as well as in conjunction with
the production of ear wax that we like to call cerumen
which helps to keep out foreign matter and bugs
and sand and dirt.
To protect what's coming next which is the middle ear.
So, once that sound energy travels through the outer
ear and ends up hitting the middle ear on your ear drum,
those three bones, which you probably heard referred to as
the hammer, anvil, and the stirrup which we like to call
the malleus, incus, and the stapes.
The manubrium of the malleus is connected to the ear drum.
The three bones are coarticulated,
so connected together,
and that plate of the stirrup looking bone, the end one,
hits on the oval window which is the entrance to the
fluid filled cochlea.
And it transmits the sound energy from the outer
ear to the middle ear extremely efficiently.
Which is very important because of this problem that's
called impedance mismatch.
The problem arises because we have this energy
that's traveling though the air that is striking a fluid
boundary.
And there is an acoustic impedance difference between
air and fluid.
Such, wherein, 99% of the theoretical--
Theoretically, 99% of the energy is lost because of the
sound waves reflecting off that fluid boundary.
And so, just by the anatomy of this middle ear,
we are able to overcome that impedance mismatch
due to the conical shape of the ear drum vibrating,
and the way those three middle ear bones act like
a lever system.
This actually provides amplification on the order of
30 decibels, which is like going from a soft whisper
to a normal conversation.
And, these bones are really tiny.
You can see here that they fit very comfortably
on a penny.
So you probably have heard that the smallest bones
in your body are located in the ear.
What you maybe haven't heard is that the smallest muscle
is also located in the middle ear.
And you can see it on this diagram here, the red arrow
is pointing to the muscle represented in that blue color.
And this muscle, it's called the stapedius, is really
relevant to our conversation today about noise
because its purpose it actually to help protect us
from loud noises.
Mostly some that we make ourselves, like when we're
chewing, and when we're speaking.
The one thing is doesn't do, however, is protect us from
loud transient instantaneous noises.
So, for example, it would not protect you against the
sound of a gunshot or a fire cracker.
And it does fatigue out.
And the way it helps protect us from noise exposure,
in a way, is that when that muscle tightens,
it makes those bones not able to vibrate.
It dampens the vibrations of the bones.
Which means that less energy is transferred on into
the system.
And, part of the reason that, as people get older,
they tend to report that loud sounds, they kind of annoy
them more than they maybe did in the past.
It's because of the stiffening of the system and that
muscle can't as effectively dampen that noise.
However, please don't think that this is adequate for
hearing protection, it's not.
We'll talk about some other options for hearing
protection soon.
So, moving right along, we get to the inner ear.
Those little loops on the pink snail guy,
those are kind of the home to our balance system.
And then the snail like structure, which
is the sensory organ of hearing.
And, here we have a 3D cross section where you can see
that the cochlea actually spirals upward.
And why it's so important is it acts like a frequency
analyzer.
So, certain areas of the cochlea will only respond to
certain frequencies.
For example, there we go.
When the sound energy comes in, if it's a high frequency
sound, the cells here at the base will be stimulated
and respond.
And if it's a lower frequency sound, the cells at the apex
respond, and this is called tonal topicity.
So, if we continue zooming in on one of these 3D cross
sections, you can see these three chambers,
or vestibule which are filled with fluid.
And then if we zoom in again on this organ of corti,
which people like to call the actual organ of hearing,
we see these beautiful hair cells.
So, the hair cells are depicted in this diagram on the left,
we have one row of inner hair cells, and then three rows
of outer hair cells.
And these cells play different purposes, have different
functions in our ear.
What happens when we hear a sound is like we talked about,
the sound energy travels down the outer ear,
it's transmitted through the middle ear bones,
those bones pow pow pow on the cochlea.
This sets the fluids in motion in the cochlea and this
vibrates one of the membranes within the cochlea,
this basilar membrane.
And when that membrane starts moving,
the hair cells start bumping up against this other membrane
on top.
And, when that happens, the hair cells get bent and that's
the impetus for the nerve impulse to our brain
for the perception of hearing.
The inner hair cells serve the role of being the sensory
cells, so they're afferently innvervated.
They're sending that message up to the brain.
The outer hair cells have a slightly different role.
Which is amplification of the sound.
And they do this by, and it's not entirely the mechanics
and physics of it isn't entirely understood,
but what scientist theorize is that these outer hair cells
actively pump and contract which adds energy into
the system of this inner ear.
And causes additional bending of those inner hair cells.
And that's extremely important.
If we do not have outer hair cells, we typically have a
hearing loss on the order of 40 to 50 decibels, minimally.
And the reason that these are also so important to our
discussion today is that these hair cells are typically
the place where noise causes damage.
Which I'm going to pass over to my fellow student, Tim
to talk a little bit more about.
Thank you.
- Alright, good evening.
As Rachel said, my name is Tim Kuckuk and I'm also
a student at the UW in the doctorate of audiology program.
So continuing on.
We've talked so far about noise and our normal hearing
system, so what I'd like to do is let's combine the two
and let's talk about how noise can damage our hearing.
So, above, I have pictured this grassy field on a
beautiful day.
And the grass represents our hair cells.
Where they're standing tall and dancing in the breeze.
But that path down the middle that has been trampled
over and over again cannot bounce back up and stand tall.
So that represents an area in our cochlea where the hair
cells have been overworked and overused over and over
and over again.
I do have a short anecdote to help illustrate this point.
A previous employer of mine, Russ, used to work at a
television studio in his high school and college years
during the 1970's and the production room of that studio
was full of those big, bulky CRT, or Cathode Ray Tube
television sets.
And as many of us probably remember, those TVs
would let off a high frequency hum at about 15,000 hertz.
Well, having the studio, or that room, full of those,
it was very loud in the whole building.
So when Russ, on his first day, walked through that
front door, he heard it.
All the way at the other side of the building.
And he brought this fact up to his boss and he's like,
"Hey, this is really really loud."
And his boss simply said, "You'll get used to it."
So, after a while, sure enough, Russ eventually stopped
hearing that sound.
Which wasn't just him getting used to it, but it was
actually a noise-induced hearing loss at that particular
frequency.
And still, to this day, Russ cannot hear those TV's,
or at least that frequency for those TV's.
So on this slide, I have an electron microscope image
of our hair cells.
On your left side are the normal hair cells.
So those are standing tall, just like the grass,
blowing in the breeze.
And then on the right side are the damaged hair cells.
So those are the ones that get overused and overworked.
So it does actually look like grass that has been trampled.
And what's going on here is called a permanent threshold
shift.
So, what threshold means in audiology terms is the lowest
level at which you can hear a sound.
So, a shift is generally an increase in volume.
So what that all means together is as your hearing
worsens, your threshold has to increase for you to hear it.
As we talked about with Russ, the permanent threshold
shift happens over many exposures to that noise.
So a lot of overworking and overusing of those hair cells
creates that type of damage.
There are other types of hearing loss as well,
other types of noise-induced hearing loss.
One of which is a temporary threshold shift.
And this is when you temporarily lose your hearing.
Or things become softer for a while.
And it generally comes back after about 24, maybe 48 hours.
And many of us have probably experienced this after,
let's say, a concert or a fireworks display, for example.
Now the hearing generally seems to get better,
but, in the long run, this could actually lead down the path
toward a permanent threshold shift and start causing
some permanent damage.
We do have another type of noise-induced hearing loss
and that is called acoustic trauma
which is caused by very, very loud sounds, such as a gunshot
or an explosion.
And this causes physical damage to our system,
such as rupturing our ear drum or damaging those tiny
bones in our middle ear.
And this can be, this can be immediate and permanent damage.
As soon as that sound goes off.
And when I say permanent, I really mean it.
There is work that's being done on trying to regenerate
hair cells, actually work that's being done at this
university, but so far, we haven't been able to do that.
So, before diving into the affects of hearing loss on us
as individuals, let's talk about a few statistics to really
understand this type of hearing challenge.
48 million Americans experience hearing loss.
Now that's about 35 million more people with hearing loss
than with vision problems.
And I thought that was particularly interesting because
I wear glasses.
Also, 60% of our veterans coming home from Afghanistan
and Iraq have hearing loss.
It's listed as the number one war wound for our veterans.
A 2006 study stated that 20% of teenagers have some sort
of hearing loss.
Which is an increase of about 5% since 1994.
Which means that, today, this could even be higher
than just one in five teens.
But, what's the big deal?
Surely your hearing loss is just turning down the volume
so all we have to do is just turn it back up, right?
Unfortunately, no, and I'd like to explain and demonstrate
what a noise-induced hearing loss sounds like.
Now, I know some of you have experienced a hearing loss
first hand, but for those who haven't, I like to demonstrate
a few different degrees of a common noise-induced
hearing loss.
First, I'll orient to you what's going on on the slide.
This blue box in the middle over here, is a graphical
frequency analyzer.
So what it's showing is on the X-axis, from left to right,
we have 20 hertz all the way up to 20,000 hertz,
which is our normal range of hearing.
From the Y-axis, up and down, is a relative decibels
in sound pressure level.
So, visually, what we'll be able to see is what frequencies
are present in these sound examples at what volume.
So let's go ahead and listen.
This first example is what we consider a severe
hearing loss.
Now, it's going to be quiet, I'll give you that much
and It's probably going to be very difficult to understand
but, let's try it anyway.
[inaudible]
All right, so that was very difficult to understand.
And, even for me, who knows exactly what this guy is
trying to say.
But, what we could see on here, let's talk about that,
is the frequency range of this particular example was about
100 hertz to about 1,000 hertz.
And the volume was not very robust, it was right around
this area, and remember this is a Relative dB scale.
So let's continue on, what about another example?
So this is our classification of a moderate noise-induced
hearing loss.
Let's try that.
- [Computer, slightly louder] Oh rainy days people say,
"What a dull, gray day.
"When clouds cover the sun, the whole world seems
"dull and gray.
"The sky is gray, the water in the rivers and lakes
"looks brown and muddy.
"The grass is a dark, dull green.
"Even the flowers seem pale and faded."
- All right, so it's getting a little bit easier to
understand.
You may have picked out a couple words, you may have
gotten a little bit of what he's trying to exactly say.
But, looking at the frequency and the volume as well,
the frequency seems to be getting a little bit wider,
up to about 2,000 hertz.
And the volume was getting a little bit higher, as well.
So continuing on, what about what we consider a
mild hearing loss?
- [Computer, even louder] "On rainy days people say,
"What a dull, gray day.
"When clouds cover the sun, the whole world seems
"dull and gray.
"The sky is gray, the water in the rivers and lakes
"looks brown and muddy.
"The grass is a dark, dull green.
"Even the flowers seem pale and faded.
- So that was much easier to understand.
And even the topic of his speech is not really going along
with that beautiful scene that I had displayed
at the beginning, but nonetheless, we still understood
what he was trying to say.
So looking at the frequency range and the volume again,
it's continuing to grow and the volume is continuing
to increase as well.
But what about--
Before I talk about that, I would like to mention that
these particular frequency ranges of these last
three examples, I'm sure you noticed that it's all
taking place between 100 to 1,000 hertz.
And those are what we consider move of the low frequencies.
And there's really nothing on the far right side of our
graph, the high frequencies.
And that's because our high frequencies seem to be lost
first for this particular noise-induced hearing loss.
But, what about normal hearing?
Let's give that a shot.
Or what we consider "normal" hearing.
- [Computer, normal audio]: "On rainy days people say,
"What a dull gray day.
"When clouds cover the sun, the whole world seems
"dull and gray.
"The sky is gray, the water in the rivers and lakes
"looks brown and muddy.
" The grass is a dark, dull green.
"Even the flowers seem pale and faded."
- So that's a substantial difference in clarity.
And that's generally due to that increased frequency
range.
In this example we got up to almost 10,000 hertz
which is way higher than the other examples.
And what this means is that the clarity of speech increases.
So the S's and the T's become much more crisp
and easier to understand.
And I also wanted to emphasize, again, that hearing loss
is not like turning down the volume.
And noise-induced hearing loss does damage to the hair cells
which makes it harder for our brain to interpret the
information as it gets sent along the rest of the pathway.
Now, with all of that being said, I'm sure you can
understand that any type of hearing loss creates
communication difficulties.
Not only in your personal life, but also in the workplace.
There was a study done by David Young, who's associated
with Harvard, and he stated that people with hearing loss
typically earn about 25% less than their normal hearing
counterparts.
And this is just the people who are able to work because
people with hearing loss suffer 35% unemployment rates.
Now, that's only one reason to protect your hearing
for the future.
So, Dr. Buhr-Lawler will continue with
other ways to promote
hearing protection and conservation.
- Great, thank you, thank you Rachel.
Am I on?
Yeah, thank you, let me clip on here.
Okay, so thank you to Rachel for that excellent description
of the auditory system and to Tim for those wonderful
examples and discussion of hearing loss.
As I previously mentioned, many of us are in noisy
environments and we don't usually get this kind of
warning in our daily lives.
Unfortunately.
So a goal that has been very near and dear to my heart
is to raise awareness in the public, especially in this
state, of ways to prevent hearing loss through noise
exposure, and to give people simple, concrete ways
to do so.
So I've been fortunate to be able to do so through clinical
outreach projects and I'm gonna say a few words
about them now.
Protecting our hearing from noise-induced hearing loss
can actually be quite simple.
And that is the message that we are trying to spread.
So when I was formulating my ideas for clinical outreach,
and this is something that we do a lot of in our program,
I started thinking about where we can make the most impact.
And out of that grew the first idea for the first goal
for our Wisconsin Idea, audiology outreach projects.
And that goal is to focus on groups of people who are not
already getting traditional hearing conservation services.
As I mentioned before, I've thought a lot about rural noise
and when I was thinking about these projects I went to
my dad, the farmer, and I said,
"How can I reach a big group of people who are exposed
"to rural noise?"
The farmers, the hunters, the machine workers.
And he gave me the idea to go to the Tomah Tractor Pull.
And that's what you see here.
I took a group of students last year and we did some hearing
conservation that I'm gonna talk about and I also did
some brief measures of noise levels.
And we measured levels of 109 decibels, just really
preliminaryly at the very lightest tractor pull division.
And when I say lightest, they get like five engines on the
tractors and that was just with one engine.
So, that was enough--
So this is the group I took the first year.
And I just want to acknowledge that's me with the longer
hair and the no glasses.
And to my left is my wonderful colleague, Amy Kroll
and her children.
And I want to acknowledge everyone that came that
first year.
That was enough reason, that 109 decibels, to make us want
to go back to the tractor pull.
So we actually just went back to the Tomah Tractor Pull.
It was this past weekend and, once again,
we returned this time with a really nice sound level
meter to measure sound levels and measure levels
at the lightest tractor division, again, of 126 decibels
that I mentioned earlier on that noise scale.
So, if you remember that chart, that is very very loud
and everyone there reported it just gets louder and louder
from that point.
[upbeat music]
I'm gonna pause that for a second.
Sorry about that.
So, bare with me for just a moment.
So people participating in the tractor pull are generally
the people who may have noise exposure in other
aspects of their lives.
As I mentioned, you are seeing hunters, machine workers,
people who go to a lot of concerts, and so on.
That's not the only type of group we like to focus on.
I like to focus on musicians because of those reasons
that we mentioned before.
We also reach out to people who have already experience
hearing loss, be it do to noise exposure or for other
reasons.
So, we go to senior centers and talk about hearing
technology, we go to schools and talk to younger people
about things they can do to protect their hearing.
I just want to share with you a very brief video.
It actually is very timely because it was just a
lovely article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
a front page, actually, on Monday, on this project.
And this is the little news clip that they put online
and there was a video in addition to that article.
And there's a little too much of me in the story,
so I apologize in advance!
But the reason I want to show you is because I think it
really illustrates the high noise levels of the tractor pull
and it also gives you an example of some of the things
that we did there.
So we'll see if I can get it to play now.
[upbeat music]
[loud engine noise]
- [Video] We are here handing out ear plugs
and talking to the pullers
and the people here at the tractor pull
to try to help them avoid preventable hearing loss
because we know, because of the measurements that
we're doing that these noise levels are loud enough
to cause permanent hearing loss.
And not only that, we're trying to reach people so that
they can carry what they're learning about hearing loss
prevention and wearing ear plugs and ear muffs into
their daily lives.
Because a lot of the people that come to the tractor pull
are people that work in noise.
They might be farmers or self-employed or work in the
machine shop and a lot of those professions
are not regulated by OSHA, or more likely regulated
by OSHA.
Especially small farmers or people who are self-employed.
I'm doing noise measurements and the sound levels
that I'm measuring right now from the tractors
are quite loud!
[loud tractor engine]
So we're measuring pretty loud levels here at the
tractor pull, we just measured levels of 120 decibels
in the light tractor divisions, so some of the softest
tractors and we know from OSHA that it's only safe to
listen to that level of sound for about seven minutes
in an entire day before you're at risk for permanent
hearing loss.
So, as you can imagine, it's really important for everyone
here at the tractor pull to wear their hearing protection
that we're handing out.
- Do you guys need any ear plugs?
- Thank you.
- Do you guys need any more?
- Thank you.
- Sometimes there's a little bit of resistance to wearing
ear plugs, there might be part of the macho culture
not wanting to have them in their ears or wanting to really
experience the sound, or just that feeling that,
"Oh this isn't gonna happen to me."
And so what we're trying to do is make change by
getting people to take the ear plugs and wear the ear
plugs to prevent the hearing loss and then maybe think
about it more broadly in their daily lives.
There's a couple goals to this Wisconsin Audiology
Outreach project and the short term goal is to have...
[tractor engine revving]
...to have an immediate effect on the lives of the people
that we're interacting with here at the tractor pull.
So the pullers and the people that are coming to attend
the pull and work at the pull.
And the long term goal is to create a lasting impact
for at least some of those people that we're interacting
with maybe to encourage them to take the hearing protection
into their daily lives and their recreation and their jobs.
And, hopefully, also to have a positive effect on our
students where they can take what they're learning
in this type of outreach into their future clinical work
and remember how important it is to reach out
to the community.
- Okay, I just want to say, for the record, that I was
wearing ear plugs for the whole interview.
Which made it really interesting, but it was really
impossible to be comfortable without them on.
The second goal, and I mentioned it briefly in the video,
the second goal of this type of outreach is to make
an immediate impact in the community.
And one way to do that is to simply just make personal
contact with people and talk to them about protecting
their hearing, hand out the ear plugs, show them how to
put them in.
And I actually want to acknowledge our
she's actually sitting right in the back of the room,
Ariel Young, that is on the Whisk homepage right now.
So it's kind of a big deal for our department.
We're really proud of this project.
To elaborate just briefly on what you saw in the video,
the first year we went we were supported by
Wisconsin Idea Outreach grant through University relations
and we were able to hand out 2,000 pairs of ear plugs.
We walked around with signs and made lots of connections.
We went again this past weekend and handed out 4500
pair of ear plugs, we had a very generous Baldwin mini grant
through UW-Madison.
It's another Wisconsin Idea outreach grant.
And it supported us in getting a booth where people
could come and talk to us.
That's what you saw with that crazy guy with the mohawk.
We did the sound level measures, it supported the purchase
of that.
So we've really been able to expand upon this project,
it's been very exciting.
We have had many, many thank you's, many grateful people.
Some people that don't want the ear plugs.
And my very favorite part of this is the people that are
using them, and especially, we reached a lot of children
who would not have actually had ear plugs otherwise.
So the third goal of this type of outreach is the loftiest
goal and it is to work on creating
long-term positive impact
in the populations that we focus on.
We are working to create that type of impact through
education.
So actually, projects like this one, but also working in
one on one and group activities all across the state
of Wisconsin.
We're out talking to individuals, talking to groups
about hearing loss prevention.
And also what to do if you already have a hearing loss.
We go to tractor pulls, as you saw, this coming next week
we're going to, I'm taking a group of students and another
clinical professor to a motorcycle rally.
That should be interesting, that's gonna be a first.
We're doing the same kind of project there.
We go to local and state clubs, like senior clubs,
or Kiwanis Clubs, as I mentioned, schools.
We talk to people about living and working in noise,
about how it is never too late to protect their hearing
because that's a common misconception that we hear
directly from people.
"Well I can't hear anyway, I don't need your ear plugs."
So we try to spread the word and I do feel,
just anecdotaly, we weren't able to measure, but anecdotaly
I feel we were more positively received at the tractor pull
this year.
Although, I think we were positively received last year.
I think we just had more yes's to the ear plugs this year.
We also are talking to teens and the people with whom
we work about using their MP3 players at safe levels.
And to musicians about the risks of noise-induced
hearing loss.
I just want to point out, this is another type of outreach
project that we're doing.
We are hosting, now annually, in our department,
it's planned by our graduate students, a symposium
on hearing and hearing loss.
And they pick a topic.
This years topic was tinnitus.
And we bring in some experts and have experts from
out own program and it's been well received and it
continues to grow, it's free.
You guys can all come.
And this is a break-out session with some graduate
students on the left talking to a smaller group of people
about hearing technology available for people with
tinnitus.
So that's something we're very excited about and it's
in its third year.
So we don't, I'll get to this, I skipped ahead a little
early, but I also want to mention that we want to also
create lasting effects in our students.
And so I and the rest of my wonderful department
firmly believe that this type of clinical outreach is
unsurpassed in teaching skills for the future.
You know, there's no replacement in graduate education
for experiential learning.
So we're hoping through projects like the ones that
I've described, our students who are going to be clinical
audiologists, will take this type of experience and use it
to shape their future experience and maybe bring
this type of project into their own clinical
practice someday.
So as the title of this slide states, and contrary to what
my daughter is showing in this picture,
hearing protection really never hurt anyone and now
you know it can make a huge impact.
I want to just say that there is a lot of great media about
hearing technology these days.
And I am a huge believer in hearing technology.
I work everyday with people with hearing aids,
and with cochlear implants, and it's really wonderful.
I actually, also, get to spend time doing research
and Dr. Litovsky, Ruth Litovsky is binaural hearing
and speech lab on cochlear implant work.
It's one of the premier labs for that kind of work
in the world.
So I love hearing technology and working with people
who have hearing loss, but I want to mention that,
reiterate what Tim said that if you can prevent hearing
loss before it occurs, there's actually no substitute
for natural hearing.
Even the most high technology that we have these days
can't restore the auditory system to its previous
function, yet.
So the best possible method to ensure best hearing
in the future is very low cost, it's low technology,
it's ear plugs, ear muffs.
And these come in different shapes and styles
and at the end of this we're gonna hand those out
to you to take home as a little bonus.
If they are uncomfortable you can purchase them over the
counter, you can get them custom made to be comfortable
and look good for your body.
I just want to briefly say, there's also specialty hearing
protection for people like hunters.
So those are really special in that you can carry on
a normal conversation, so they have a little way
to allow sound in, but then they detect the sound of a
gunshot and almost instantaneously provide
hearing protection for that type of sound.
So it's pretty neat.
Another type of specialty hearing protection that was
designed for musicians.
So our foam ear plugs we're going to hand out today
just muffle the sound and they tend to actually muffle
those high pitches that are so important for speech.
As you heard on the example, they muffle those a little more.
And if you can imagine, when you listen to music,
you really want to hear everything in it's,
kind of, full glory.
And so the musicians ear plugs have special filters
in them that turn the volume down, but maintain
the fidelity of the sound.
So that's something that we work with in our clinic.
You can also protect your hearing one last plug,
by reducing noise at the source.
So if you have kids or grand kids, or you yourself,
listens to music with ear buds or ear phones,
you can actually use commercially available software
like iTunes to set the limit of your device so that it is
a safe listening level and you cannot exceed that level.
And for kids, you can actually purchase special headphones,
or even for you, that limit the sound level to a safe level.
You know, for those farmers out there, it helps to be
in the cab tractor.
If you're working in your machine shop and there's a
really noisy motor, you know, to put some sort of isolation
around it.
All of those things help at the source of the sound.
And if you know someone that has a hearing loss,
or who has tinnitus, or just has concerns about their
auditory system or their ears, please feel free to send
them our way.
So, I teach at the University, but I also work clinically.
And we actually have a teaching clinic for our students
and now you know how wonderful they are.
It's for our Au.D. Program, but we see people all throughout
the public and it's located at Good Night Hall
right across campus on the Lakeshore path.
It's called the UW Speech and Hearing Clinic.
So, please feel free to come and see us or send people
or way, if you like.
We work with hearing technology and also with lots
of great rehab and communication strategies to help
people at all points of this journey.
And now that you are armed with all of this awesome
information, please spread the word to your friends and
family and people you meet on the street about how to
protect their hearing and on hearing loss prevention.
So, that's all I've got, thank you.
[audience applauding]