Advice Wanted — Attending a Press Conference — Speaker and Shutter Noises, Inescapable Press Room

Hello!

I have recently got a new job and was looking for some advice.

I am working as a part-time journalist and videographer and have been requested, for work, to attend a boxing press conference tomorrow.

Thing is, I am concerned over possible noises. These being:
1. A busy inescapable press room, hustle and bustle and clamour
2. Speaker noise that fighters may be speaking out of
3. Shutter noise of cameras

I plan to wear earplugs, but I wear them pretty much all the time anyway that I wonder whether my ears have become very sensitive and these noises will be too much.

Anyone been in environments like this? Any advice or recommendations certainly welcome!

Thanks community!

 

Ear Plugs

Best you can get.

Pinch them and stick them deep in.

 

Thanks @JohnAdams - I have some ER-25s. Reckon these will cut it?

I’m tempted to double protect but it’s gonna be quite odd...

 

Sensitized ears aren't necessarily more prone to damage, I would guess but I'm not an expert. I think that most any quality earplug should suffice in this situation, as long as you don't stand next to a very loud, blaring loudspeaker or other source of closeup. extreme noise.

 

Doubt you need double protection, but foam earplugs with NRR 32-33 would be an excellent choice.

 

Update: wore my peltor muffs and plugs during the amplified talking. Took the muffs off for a photo op when there were just groups of people talking (no amps). This must have been for 5-10 mins (still had plugs in) and when outside.

So had fun of talking, cars passing on gravel and planes overhead (when outside).

Ears now roaring and I can’t asleep. Scared to death I’ve made it permanently worse. Hate this. Can hear new louder tones.

This was for work. Maybe a new job is required.

 

Sounds like you do need a new job.

I would estimate that your protection was more than adequate for the sound exposure you describe, but yet you spiked. Some folks are extremely sensitive, and it sounds like you unfortunately are in that category.

There is still a good chance that this spike will improve if further noise exposure is avoided, but it could definitely take a long while.

 

Thanks @Digital Doc - the sounds didn’t seem too bad at the time (plane was a little noisy overhead). Worried plugs aren’t working etc.

Do you think this will settle? Just wish I could sleep!

 

yes they are if caused by loud noise.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/joycecohen/noise-kills-when-everyday-sound-becomes-torture

The ability to recover from acoustic injury drops with increased exposure. "We don't know why, but that fact is incontrovertible," Liberman says. In other words, after the first concert, the muffling and ringing go away, and you're fine. And the same after the second. But maybe the 20th concert is the one that breaks the camel's back. "Noise risk is an incredibly complex equation."


I personally believe lower LDL's (loudness discomfort levels) and pain from sound caused by noise trauma do mean the ear is more fragile.

 

@Contrast given my experience here, do you think it’s a permanently worsened baseline?

 

i live in a very quiet area and am mostly home and rarely exposed to noise, but my tinnitus still spikes - and when it does, I get insomnia and sometimes anxiety too. No noise involved. After drying my hair or vacuuming, the tinnitus suddenly stops for a few minutes, so I'd have to ponder how noise at close range makes the tinnitus get worse... everyone is different. There's ads on the radio for a class action lawsuit concerning a certain kind of earplug worn in the military if you have tinnitus...so I'd be careful about which earplug I used.

Maybe a sound protection ear muffs would be safer?

 

Please remember the person in the article said “Acoustic Trauma” and then goes on to describe a situation, concert, where sound levels are unsafe (even to the average person) and damage hearing.

This quote does not point to safe levels of sound causing damage. If Elfin protects with ears buds and the sound level in the room isn’t loud enough to cause damage, then there is nothing to be worried about.

 

No.

Over protection leads to sound threshold shifts, which can affect your tinnitus and hyperacusis.

 

Agreed. This is how my ears used to be when I was over protecting. Once I stopped doing it, things got better.

 

Hard to know, need to give it some time. I had the intrusive T at one point, and was waking me up every 5 mins. That was when I tried sleeping with the earplugs, and it helped as otherwise every passing car was waking me up.

 

The company is 3M and they knew the ear plugs are defective.

 

I wonder if some of the lawsuit money will go to bio-medical research. Probably not.

 

This is a problem I suffer from. How did you wean yourself off? Cold turkey?

 

Hi Jack, do you mean shift the sound threshold lower, thus making ears easier to damage, or just more uncomfortable in noisy, but not dangerously loud environments?

 

From what you've read, would this be a psychosomatic/anxiety driven spike? Definitely louder and got new tones, still.

 

I am sorry to hear that you took a risk and it hasn't worked out.

The good news is that there is still a good chance that it will go away - most spikes are temporary spikes. Right now, it is too early to be worried about a permanent spike - you can worry about it if there is no improvement for over a month.

If it does go away, I hope you will learn from your mistake. We are given only a limited number of second chances.

 

You have got to be kidding me. His problem is a result of Underprotection (i.e., not avoiding that exposure to noise)(he's got New Tones), I can't believe someone would twist it to imply that the problem is "overprotection" (whatever that even means).

 

Anxiety driven spike. When I am stressed and anxious I get new tones and louder tinnitus.

 

It will make you have sound sensitivity because you auditory system isnt used to normal levels of sound. Richard Tyler has confirmed this in my interview with him that will be coming out. Over protection is not good for people with hyperacusis or tinnitus because it shifts you auditory thresholds.

 

It's not easy, but overtime I was slowly able to ween myself off of ear protection. I only used it in situations where it was needed or I started to feel uncomfortable (i.e. above 80 dB). After a period of time my ears slowly became less reactive and I able to return to school and have now started a new career.

Take it one step at a time, but in my case - which sounds like a lot like yours, overprotection has made your ears really reactive. I'm not saying to go out and go attend a rock concert, but focus on filling your house with steady sound to help your ears desensitize a bit (podcasts on my iPad really helped!), and only protect when you either the situation warrants it or you start to feel uncomfortable.

Also, as @Ed209 has said many times, your emotional reaction to your tinnitus can further inflame your tinnitus and hyperacusis and create a negative feedback loop where your fear in turn makes it worse and then that stress makes your tinnitus and hyperacusis worse.

 

Hearing damage is unlikely, but a permanent spike is certainly a possibility, as evidenced by:

All of the cases above have one thing in common - none of the sounds involved could have caused hearing loss - but those sounds had surely caused a T spike (that ended up being permanent in many of the cases).

I agree that one should find out how sensitive one is to noise. The original poster had just proved that the noise at press conferences is too loud for him. Hopefully this will change in a year or two, but for now it would seem that he should learn from this experience and try to avoid press conferences and similar (and louder) events.

 

The above might certainly happen. However, Ed had often ignored that for many people he addressed the above advice to. First they got a tinnitus spike and THEN they began to worry. In other words, they exposed themselves to some moderate noise, and were NOT worried - that noise was not Too loud. After that they got a spike and that's when they began to panic. This proves that stress was not the reason for their spike, and that Ed was either wrong because he didn't take the time to look into their cases, or that he ignored their stories because he chose to ignore all of the evidence that contradicts his almost religious beliefs about "overprotection".

 

Maybe. But I stand by what I said.

 

I was protecting my ears religiously, and over time my ears became less reactive.

I had followed the same strategy - I used hearing protection only when the noise made my ears uncomfortable. In my case, it didn't matter for me how loud the noise actually was - if it caused any discomfort, I made sure to avoid it.