IPods and Hearing Loss

The Wall Street Journal has a good article on music and your ears:

A 2004 study at Children's Hospital Boston sought to set a safe exposure time for recreational listening by adapting the government standards for workplace noise. According to NIOSH, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the safe exposure limit is 85 decibels for eight hours a day. (A typical vacuum cleaner emits 85 decibels.) Every time the volume level increases by three decibels, the safe exposure time drops by half.

The researchers determined that the exposure limit for safe headphone listening is one hour a day with the volume no higher than 60%. If you listen for more than an hour, you should turn the volume below 60%. Another informal rule of thumb: If you have to remove the headphones to hear people talking to you, it is too loud. The Boston researchers are currently doing additional studies of young adults' listening habits to learn more about what factors contribute to dangerous listening practices.

You might want to read the whole thing.