“I hadn’t really noticed that I had a hearing problem. I just thought most
people had given up on speaking clearly.”—Hal Linden
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The last Sunday of every September is designated as World Day of The Deaf. It was initiated by the World Federation of the Deaf in 1958 to create awareness about deafness and also celebrate the achievements of deaf people.
You may not know it but Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the most famous composers that ever lived, was profoundly deaf. But that didn’t stop him from composing his world-renowned music.
Thomas Edison was completely deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other. He believed that his deafness was a benefit to his work, as it would help keep conversations short so that he could have more time for work!
Thomas Alva Edison experienced complete deafness in one ear and had significant hearing difficulties in the other. He perceived his hearing impairment as advantageous to his professional endeavors, as it allowed for more concise conversations, thereby affording him additional time to focus on his work.
Helen Keller, an American educator who was both blind and deaf, emerged as a significant socio-political activist. Through her compassion and dedication to activism, she profoundly transformed the lives of numerous individuals with disabilities.
Actress, author and activist Marlee Matlin is the only deaf person to have ever won an Oscar trophy for a leading role. She won it in 1987 for her tour de force performance in Children of a Lesser God.
Deaf has something to do with hearing and noise. When it comes to predicting someone’s age, you may be better off checking their hearing instead of counting their gray hairs. That’s because by age 60, nearly everyone suffers from some hearing loss, and after age 70, they continue to lose hearing steadily.
But that’s at least one factor that ensures hearing loss long before age-related problems set in. And that’s continued exposure to loud noise.
“Noise damage is caused by both the intensity of the sound and the duration of the exposure,” explains Dr. Charles Kimmelman, professor of otolaryngology at Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital. “But because the effect of noise damage is cumulative, hearing loss from noise adds to the hearing loss you’ll get from aging.”
Noise – unwanted or harmful sound – is a pervasive pollution in society. It enters our ears as powerful waves of mechanical energy. Scientists measure sound intensity in decibels (db), with each doubling of energy adding three decibels.
Ordinary conversation measures bout 60 db; a child’s scream hits around 90 db. On this logarithmic scale, the scream is potentially 1000 times more powerful. High-fidelity amplified music – be it rock or classical – from a sound box can pound as high as 110 db.
In the Philippines, the standard threshold of noise allowed is 85 dB for eight working hours. “This standard isn’t ideal, because noise affects individuals differently,” says Dr. William Clark of Washington University’s Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis, Missouri. “In theory, the standard should protect the lifetime hearing of 90 percent of workers. However, it assumes that a worker’s ears will have 16 hours of quiet each day during which to recover – an unlikely assumption for most people.”
Our organ of hearing and balance consists of the outer, middle, and inner ear. The outer ear consists of the external part of the ear and the ear canal. The middle ear consists of the eardrum and a small air-filled chamber containing a chain of three tiny bones that connect the eardrum to the inner ear. The inner ear is a complex structure consisting of two major parts: the cochlea, the organ of hearing; and the semicircular canals, the organ of balance.
That which we perceive as sound is in reality changes in air pressure. In order for the human ear to hear a sound it must change air pressure at least 40 times per second (this means 20 cycles per second – there are two changes in air pressure for each cycle). If, however, the air pressure changes more than 40 thousand times per second (20,000 cycles per second), the sound is too high for the human ear to hear.
“Past the bones of the middle ear (the smallest bones in the human body) are thousand of hair cells,” writes Massie K. Santos. “When the bones in the middle ear vibrate due to sound, the hair cells pick up the movements and convert them into electrical impulses that nerves send to the brain for processing and identification.”
According to Santos, although the hair cells are extremely resilient, they can be damaged. “Unfortunately, like brain cells, hair cells are never replaced when they die,” she pointed out in her article, ‘The Cost of Living Too Loud.’
Helen Keller once remarked that vision loss separates an individual from mere things, but hearing loss separates that person from the community. “Loneliness is a huge problem when one becomes older,” says Dr. Gary J. Glascoe, associate professor of communicative disorders at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. “Why would someone willingly jeopardize the one sense that forms connections with other people?”
Good question.
