Rates of hearing loss among adults are dropping

Despite concerns that noisy music, walkmans, and MP3 players may cause great damage to the hearing of young adults, a new study found that heating loss appears to be declining among adults. The study suggests reduced noise levels at work and better overall health are more important than the rise of MP3 players and other noisy new products.

This counterintuitive finding from the first study of long-term changes in hearing loss is that for every five years a man or woman was born later in the 20th century, their chance of having hearing impairment dropped 13 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

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“Because many people think that the world is getting noisier and noisier, they think that the prevalence of hearing impairment might increase,” said Weihai Zhan, a population health scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “But the prevalence of hearing impairment is decreasing across the generation.”

More info at Wired.