Car Backfiring Decibel — Another Setback

Hi all.

I was just in the car park talking to a friend. A Mitsubishi Evo turns up and started revving, spitting flames, it was like gun shots. My ears are now feeling full and are ringing more, they also feel a bit of pain.

How loud is a car backfiring? It had a huge exhaust, I'm worried this is yet another set back. Fed up

 

If your ear wasn't right next to the exhaust pipe I don't think you have anything to worry about.

That is, even if the backfire was ~140db one inch from the pipe, if you were standing 15' away from it, then it would be more like 113db which is loud but not anything to be worried about.

The best way to turn this into a longer-term spike, is to obsess and worry about it...

(I know backfires can sound pretty loud, but they are orders of magnitude quieter than a handgun shot).

 

Aie, it's loud, very loud from what i can see on videos!

rest your ears is my advice.

 

The same thing happened to me last year, a gaint exhaust on a modified car backfiring right next to me as it drove down the road, except it didnt happen the once it happened 4 or 5 times! Yes it did sound like gun shots! I couldn't cover my ears because I had my hands full at the time, my ears where sore afterwards and I was certain I'd done damage but fortunately my tinnitus was unaffected, hopefully you'll be ok!

 

How are you geg? You know the drill..pop some NAC , magnesium, vitamins, stay at home for 2 or 3 days if you can ..what else can we do anyway ? let us know..

 

You refuse to wear ear plugs, you made that choice, what do you expect to happen? Noises like this are common unless you live in the middle of no where. It will happen again for sure.

You can ignore it, move on, or you can wear plugs next time. Those are really your only choices. Well...I guess you can refuse ear protection and then get upset every time there is a loud noise and post about it.

 

I don't think that wearing earplugs in every environment out of nervous anticipation of damaging sounds is a reasonable life strategy for me.

The number of sounds which are likely to be totally unexpected and permanently damaging is astonishingly low, unless you live someplace which is prone to spontaneous gunfights breaking out.

More common sounds, like car backfires, thunder, or ambulances blazing by, are annoying and unpleasant, but the odds of them actually being damaging -- even to people with existing hearing damage -- are very, very, very low. As I said before, car backfires top out around 140db. That might be damaging if it happens to be right next to your ear, but if you are outdoors and 10' away from it then suddenly it is just annoyance and not damage.

In urban environments, what I am more wary of is less loud, but constant sounds. For instance, if you're in a high-rise patio situated over a busy road, you might be exposed to 85-90db ambient sound. That's not anything to worry about in a 2 minute time span, but if you're sitting there for hours and hours then it adds up.

 

I recall several topics made by the same user for this very same reason.

It is all overreacting. Worrying for things you have no control over. If it weren't for tinnitus related matters you'd probably be worried about some other thing. You're finding reasons to worry and fixating on them.

Anyways as people have told you before the only choices you have if you really don't want something like this to happen again is to :

1. Never get out anymore
2. Wear earplugs all the time

 

Sorry, but there's no way I'm going to wear plugs all the time. I done that for the first month and it was hell, I couldn't tolerate every day sounds and it made my tinnitus extremely reactive. I couldn't even get out the house.

I think it's my anxiety which gets the best of me in situations like this. Linearb is right, sounds like these are loud but so short they won't cause damage. There can't be a huge number of sounds that will cause damage before I'm able to plug my ears with my fingers.

I'm sorry for ranting on a support forum.

 

Geg is right, this is a support part,isn't it? Have you already forgotten how scared one can be of the perspective of the condition getting worse ? Who else can comfort him better if not people here ? Even if he started a few similar threads, so what ? That's maybe because he had bad luck more often than others. OR he handles it worse than others but either way, he should not be critisised here . The outside world will kick us enough.
It doesn't take such a load of reading here to figure out very fast that wearing ear plugs all the time when outside only 'just in case' leads to one thing in long term - worsening your condition but imprinting the noise even more in the brain and hyperacusis as a bonus.
Like linearb said, most outisde noises are not loud enough to require protection and therefore will only make your brains freak out and try to amplify the muffled sounds AND the T as well as a consequence.
On the other hand I wouldn't agree that 140 db from 10' is surely safe - we don't know that cause nobody knows that. The stats on the net are standardised and don't apply to everybody cause everybody has a little different damage treshhold. It's like saying that everybody should be able to wear shoes size 37 cause statistically that's the avarage shoes size for a human being. Also, the db stats given on the net are supposed to be given at 1m distance not at the very place with our ear right next to the source. So Geg is not overreacting. I mean, hopefully nothing happened to him but since he's been suffering with what he's got already, it's not surprising that he's worried.
You fine, Geg ?

 

Thank you, Gosia. Perhaps I do post too much. I'm not too bad thank you, a lot of things are just going wrong at the moment and I feel very lonely, but you have to have bad periods to get to the good! Hope you're well?

 

You don't post too much. There are no limits, as far as I know. This forum should be one place in this hostile world we shouldn't worry about being knocked down. Actually I'm having a nasty spike today after two fairly quiet days, but somehow I trust tomorrow it will be gone as I did nothing to upset my ears or brain lately..And I'm starting CBT in a week so I'm hopeful about it .. we risk acoustic traumas when we are oitside, that's true, but after all we risk worsening more if we put plugs in all the time. My golden mean is to go out with hands always ready to cover my ears ( so no bike or 20 kg of shopping ) and having eyes around my head to forsee danger on time..for now it worked quite well. I haven't had any real 'accident' outside. When walking downtown I will rather chose small streets rather than main boulvards where cars drives. I try to be always as far as possible from traffic. I cover ears each time a motorbike passes. Hopefully finally the authorities will forbid cars downtowns in each town ( like I guess it's the case in some English towns, right?) and I'll be able to walk around there peacefully..

 

it would be nice if there were earplugs which can reduce noise not block it all and be comfortable to wear. earplusg are never comfortable to wear or put in / take out. you can even cause damage doing that. also wax can be pushed further in

 

Im not suggesting you wear ear plugs all the time. I'm saying you made a choice not to protect, this kind of thing will happen thousands of times again unless you are protected at all times or hiding.

I don't protect at all times either, when my ears get hammered I immediately put it out of my mind because there is nothing I can do about it, I made my choice fully knowing what will happen. It is done, over, worrying about it will do nothing.

That's all I was trying to get across, that's my experience. I was just trying to help. Rant as much as you like here, no big deal.

My point is that worrying about it now or in the future when it happens over and over again is totally pointless and will just make things harder for you.

 

I wear earplugs ALL THE FRIGGiN TIME and ( Tara ta ta taaaaa) I'm lovin' it....

 

I went to a fireworks show the other day and I was worried about that. They were far away, but loud. Kinda the same thing.

Yeah I would not worry about a car exhaust. From the charts I have seen it db vs time. So even a loud db for a split second should not cause too much worry, unless you are shooting off a gun or something, but I dont see a car exhaust being that loud either and as linearb mentioned even a couple feet away would drop the db a descent amount.

 

No worries man. When I first came to this site last fall I was in the exact same position as you and was posting (and asking on doctors corner for every little thing) every time I had a run in with a loud sound.

It takes a lot of time, patience and courage but you'll get through it. No worries about posting lots, at the end of the day this is a SUPPORT fourm first and fore most.

I've been able to return to a somewhat more normal life now, and I owe a lot of that this too forum. It literally saved my life.