[Pages S2500-S2502]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

PREVENTING HEARING LOSS

Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, today I bring to the attention of my
colleagues an article that recently appeared in The Washington Post,
``Hearing Loss Touches a Younger Generation.'' This article raises
important issues related to hearing loss and gives us practical advice
for protecting our hearing.
Hearing loss affects approximately 28 million Americans and is
affecting more of us at younger ages. Hearing difficulties among those
ages 45 to 64 increased 26 percent between 1971 and 1990, while those
between ages 18 and 44 experienced a 17 percent increase.
About one third of the cases of hearing loss are caused, at least in
part, by extreme or consistent exposure to high decibel noises. While
the Environmental Protection Agency has worked to decrease our exposure
to loud noises at work, many Americans now face threats to optimal
hearing during their leisure hours from loud music, lawn mowers and
outdoor equipment, automobiles, airplanes and other sources. Too many
Americans simply are not aware of the devastating impact loud sounds
can have on their hearing.
At the encouragement of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
(NIDCD) is leading a collaborative effort with the National Institute
on Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the National Institute on
Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to help improve awareness about
noise-induced hearing loss. It is my hope that this effort ultimately
will help reverse the trend toward increasing noise-induced hearing
loss.
Health professionals, too, play an important role in the treatment
and prevention of hearing loss. In particular, I'd like to highlight
the important work of audiologists in successfully combating and
treating hearing loss. Over the years I have been impressed by the
cost-effective, quality care they provide, most notably demonstrated in
the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system, which has
allowed veterans direct access to audiologists since 1992.
Through high standards of care by qualified health care professionals
and through improved education about the dangers of hearing loss, I
believe we can protect and improve the hearing of millions of
Americans. I ask unanimous consent that the attached article be printed
in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the Washington Post]

Hearing Loss Touches a Younger Generation; With Rise in Noise, More
Seeking Help

(By Susan Levine)

Tomi Browne listens to people's ears. To how they hear and
what they don't. And for most of her 22 years as an
audiologist, her clients have been overwhelmingly older--
stereotypically so. Seniors pushing 70 or beyond. The
hearing-aid set.
But lately, surprisingly, Browne's contemporaries have been
showing up at her Northern Virginia office.
These are men and women in their forties to early fifties,
baby boomers. They confess that they strain to catch words in
crowded restaurants or meetings, or that the television
suddenly needs to be turned higher. Loud sounds really hurt
their ears, and maybe they've noticed an incessant buzzing.
Some walk out with the startling news that they've
permanently lost hearing. More

[[Page S2501]]

than a few return to get fitted for hearing aids.
``I'm seeing more of my classmates . . . as patients,
rather than them bringing in their parents,'' said Browne,
44. ``Sometimes they're even bringing in their teenage
kids.''
Other audiologists report the same sobering age shift, and
statistics are starting to corroborate the anecdotal
evidence. Data from the National Health Interview Survey
indicate that significantly more Americans are having
difficulties hearing. From 1971 to 1990, problems among those
ages 45 to 64 jumped 26 percent, while the 18 to 44 age group
reported a 17 percent increase.
California researchers found an even sharper rise in
hearing impairment among more than 5,000 men and women in
Alameda County, with rates of impairment for those in their
fifties increasing more than 150 percent from 1965 to 1994.
With people living longer than ever, ``This has to be
viewed as a very serious health and social problem,'' said
Sharon Fujikawa, president of the American Academy of
Audiology. ``It really behooves us to conserve our hearing as
much as possible or risk isolation.''
Marilyn Pena, a secretary from Germantown, was about 47
years old when she first learned her hearing was deficient.
She ignored the diagnosis. Soon she also was ignoring her
alarm clock--because she couldn't hear its wake-up beep--and
resorting to lip reading at work. ``People at work would come
up and whisper in [my] ear because they didn't want others to
hear, and I couldn't hear, either,'' she said.
After seven years, pushed by frustrated friends, Pena
finally hooked a hearing aid behind her left ear. She no
longer guesses in vain at conversation or asks, ``What?''
countless times a day. ``Since I started wearing it, I'm much
more observant. It's amazing how many people wear them.''
Worrisome changes also are taking place among children and
teenagers, who are growing up with rock concerts far more
deafening than those the Woodstock generation attended, along
with the mega-volumes of everything from video arcades to
boomboxes. A study published last year in the Journal of the
American Medical Association showed that nearly 15 percent of
children ages 6 to 19 tested suffered some hearing deficit in
either low or high frequencies. Other research has identified
pronounced differences among high-schoolers compared with
previous decades.
The main culprit, many suspect, is noise--not just the
noise blaring from the headsets that seem permanently
attached to teenagers but the noise from their parents'
surround-sound stereos, which can rival small recording
studios. Add the barrage to moviegoers' ears during flicks
such as ``Armageddon'' and ``Godzilla'' (prompting enough
complaints that the National Association of Theater Owners
convened a task force), and the blast from leaf blowers,
mowers, personal watercraft, power tools, even vacuum
cleaners.
Technological advances they may be--powerful conveniences
for daily life--but they produce decibel levels that can
prove downright dangerous to the ears over time.
``We've grown up in a sort of turned-on, switched-on
society,'' said Carole Rogin, president of the Hearing
Industries Association. The group, in partnership with the
National Council on the Aging, just completed a survey of the
social, psychological and physiological impact of hearing
loss. It's telling that the two organizations decided to drop
the age of those polled from 65 to 50.
For the estimated 28 million Americans with a hearing loss,
noise is a leading cause, experts say. Once that would have
traced back to the machinery din of mills and factories, but
federal regulations have helped protect workers in industrial
settings. Now it's more the hours away from work that are the
problem. There's even a term for those who study excessive
noise from leisure-time pursuits: recreational audiologists.
Dick Melia, of Arlington, never paid much attention to how
annoying the lawn mower or tools were that summer during
graduate school when he worked for a contractor. The same
goes for the civil rights demonstrations he participated in
during the 1960s, and later, the pro basketball games at
which he cheered. He'd leave the arena with his ears ringing.
But during his forties, he noticed other things: how he'd
replay his voice mail several times to get all of a message,
how he'd race to keep up in discussions, wondering what words
he had missed. Then, one night at his office, a fire broke
out. The alarm went off. ``I never heard it,'' Melia
recounted.
His procrastination ended; at 50, he got hearing aids.
``There is a problem of stigma,'' said Melia, who directs
disability and rehabilitation research within the U.S.
Department of Education. ``There is something about hearing
aids and the way society over the years has characterized
hearing loss.''
For one, the subject is freighted with fears about growing
old. But some scientists and audiologists question whether
diminished hearing is an unavoidable consequence of aging, or
rather the cumulative assault of a cacophonous world. Both
loud, sustained sound and extreme, sudden sound can damage
and ultimately destroy the delicate hair cells in the inner
ear that translate sound waves into nerve impulses. High-
frequency sounds are usually the first casualty--consonants
such as S and F and children's and women's voices. The
ability to distinguish sounds and block background noise also
deteriorates.
Because all that generally occurs over time, the onset of
hearing loss is slow and insidious.
``People aren't concerned if it doesn't happen now,'' said
Laurie Hanin, who leads the audiology department at the
League for the Hard of Hearing in New York City. The league
is analyzing voluminous data from 20 years of screenings in
the New York metropolitan area, and Hanin expects to find a
decided decline in hearing acuity.
Hanin, 42, sometimes has trouble understanding
conversation, an unwelcome portent of the future. ``My
hearing tests normally, but I'm starting to have some
problems,'' she said.
Last month, the National Institute on Deafness and Other
Communication Disorders gathered 100 representatives of
medical, research, volunteer and union organizations to talk
about noise-induced hearing loss--how it occurs and how it
can be prevented. The institute plans to launch a public
awareness campaign on the issue in the spring.
Prevention and education were an ongoing effort at the
Environmental Protection Agency until its Office of Noise
Abatement was eliminated in 1982. That's about the time a
push to require decibel labels on lawn equipment gave way to
voluntary notices, which were ``a miserable failure,'' in
Kenneth Feith's view, and explain why instructions on lawn
mowers or leaf blowers virtually never advise hearing
protection.
``I think we're going to see a population suffering from
hearing loss that will impair learning, impair our ability to
carry out tasks,'' said Feith, an EPA senior scientist and
policy adviser who headed the Office of Noise Abatement.
Musicians may be getting the message faster than others,
thanks to groups such as Hearing Education and Awareness for
Rockers. The 10-year-old nonprofit California organization
was founded by Kathy Peck, 39, whose bass career ended the
morning after her band opened for Duran Duran. ``I had
ringing in my ears that lasted three days. It felt like a
bongo drum was in my head.'' She sustained substantial,
irreversible damage.
Early on, HEAR gained visibility when Pete Townshend of the
Who wrote it a $10,000 check and publicly acknowledged his
own hearing loss. It soon will begin examining audiograms,
demographic data and questionnaires from thousands of
patients seen at HEAR's clinic in San Francisco. Most have
been in their twenties and thirties.
Nightclubs such as the Capitol Ballroom and the 9:30 Club
in the District now offer foam earplugs to patrons. Symphony
orchestras increasingly make earplugs and plexiglass screens
available to their musicians, especially those sitting within
or near the percussion and brass sections. As part of the
Navy bands' hearing conservation program, specially designed
plugs are handed out even before a musician gets an
assignment.
In the meantime, despite many people's refusal to admit
they need help, sales of hearing aids are booming. Nearly 2
million were purchased last year, almost 25 percent more than
in 1996, at a cost of $600 to $3,100 each. The most expensive
are individually programmed digital devices capable of
processing sounds 1 million times per second. When fitted
within the ear canal, they are literally invisible.
One buyer in 1997 was President Clinton, who attributed his
situation to an adolescence spent playing in school bands and
rocking at concerts. According to staff members, the
country's most prominent baby boomer wears his hearing aids
sporadically. He is most likely to insert them for ceremonies
or political gatherings, where he finds it harder to
distinguish sounds.
Stephen Wells, a Washington lawyer who recently received
bad news of his own, is weighing his options. Because of a
childhood spent around tractors and harvesters on his
family's Idaho farm, his right ear measures only borderline.
And that's his better ear.
``My wife has been saying for a long time that I ought to
see about a hearing test,'' said Wells, 51. He compares
hearing aids to glasses in function but is uncertain how well
they'll work for him day to day. ``I expect that I will at
least try them.''

SAY AGAIN?

A number of conditions may disrupt the hearing process and
lead to hearing loss. How the ear works and what commonly
causes damage:
How the ear Hears
1. The outer ear collects sound waves and funnels them into
the ear canal.
2. Sound waves strike the eardrum, causing it to vibrate.
3. Three tiny bones conduct the vibrations to the cochlea
in the inner ear.
4. Tiny nerve endings in the cochlea, called hair cells,
become stimulated. They transform the vibrations into
electro-chemical impulses.
5. These impulses travel to the brain, where they are
deciphered into recognizeable sounds.
Noise-induced hearing loss
Such loss is caused by one-time exposure to extremely loud
sound or sustained exposure to sounds at highmdecibels. Both
damage hair cells in the inner ear.
Symptoms of hearing loss
The following are frequent indicators of hearing loss.
Persons experiencing any of

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these symptoms should make an appointment with a hearing
professional.
Straining to understand conversations.
Misunderstanding or needing to have things repeated.
Turning up TV or radio volume to a point where others
complain.
Having constant ringing or buzzing in the ears.
Measuring sound
The loudness of sound is measured in units called decibels.
Experts agree that continued exposure to noise above 85
decibels eventually will harm hearing. The scale increases
logarithmically, meaning that the level of perceived loudness
doubles every 10 decibels.

Decibels
Softest audible sound:.............................................. 0
Normal conversation:..............................................40-60
City traffic noises:................................................ 80
Rock concert:...................................................110-120
Sound becomes painful:..............................................125
Jet plane:..........................................................140

Source: International Hearing Society, League for the Hard of Hearing
and National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

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