In my last blog, I discussed the disturbing results of a new research study that found one in five American teenagers already has some degree of hearing loss—-a startling 31 percent increase since the late 1980s. The study results were recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and showed that the number of teens with impaired hearing in at least one ear rose to 20 percent from 15 percent.
Your child needn’t be included in these statistics. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) sponsors an excellent website called It's a Noisy Planet. Protect Their Hearing. This national public education campaign is designed to increase awareness among parents of children about the causes and prevention of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). With this information, parents and other adults can encourage children to adopt healthy hearing habits before and during the time that they develop listening, leisure, and working habits. NIDCD is one our government’s National Institutes of Health.
This site includes a wealth of resources, including tips for protecting your child’s hearing, ways to talk to your child about hearing loss and hearing protection, podcasts featuring NIDCD personnel and much more. You can check out this valuable resource by logging on to www.noisyplanet.nidcd.nih.gov