Sunday, 26 February 2017

#158 Hazards of earphones (English)

Hazards of Earphones

How often do you use your earphones? Even though people are well aware of the side effects of earphone usage, earphones are still many people’s go-to due to their noise cancelling capabilities. Since earphones can provide exclusive music hearing to yourself and block external noise, people tend to ignore its adverse effects. However, we should shed new light on the downsides of earphones that threatens one of our most important parts of our body, the ears. If you put your earphones on and listen to them for a long period of time with high volume, you will have high chance of hearing loss and might as well become deaf. 


When a high frequency sound reaches our ears, that sound knocks the basal part of cochlea. There are cilia on it. Cilia are sensory organelles that receive vibration and changes the sound into electronic signals.  After that, the signals get transferred through neuron system and are sent to the brain. However, during this process the basal part and subsequently the apex part of cochlea get destroyed. Even though cochlea do have self-healing abilities, when those parts are irrevocably damaged or destroyed due to its constant exposure to high frequency sounds, the cilia will inevitably come to its limits. Then cilia will have a lasting damage and aren’t able to function properly which eventually leads to a hearing loss. According to the Journal of American Medical Association, hearing loss in teens is “30% higher than it was in the ’80s and ’90s”. About 1 in 5 teens have suffered some degree of hearing loss due to their exposure to loud music by the usage of earphones. Earphones should be less used, or we shall find an alternative way to listen to music. Luckily, due to the rapid technological development, we might soon find a measure to this problem. 

KSY

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