Earmuffs: A Winter Double-Whammy?

As the weather outside grows frightful, a delightful thought occurs to us: the winter season is the perfect time to put your earmuffs to good use.

Yes -- your hearing protection earmuffs!

Sure, they're not fuzzy, and they probably won't match your favorite festive Christmas sweater with the dancing reindeers on it -- but hearing protection earmuffs will protect you from the noise caused by snowblowers, snowmobiles, and any other irritating winter noises you might encounter this winter season. And while they're at it, they'll help keep your ears warm, too.

Now, let's be clear: those fuzzy things most people picture when they think "earmuffs" (the kind of earmuffs that do not protect your hearing) are probably going to be a little warmer than most hearing protection earmuffs will be.

(Or maybe not; we personally have yet to find a pair of non-hearing protection earmuffs that do more than making us LOOK warmer... while getting fuzzy lint all over our reindeer sweaters. But maybe that's just us.)

Anyway, whether you like fuzzy ear-warmers or not, real earmuffs offer double the value. Designed to seal all the way around the ear, they can definitely help keep your ears out of the cold (they're particularly excellent for cutting down on that ear-numbing wind chill), and they'll protect the delicate insides of your ears from noise while they're keeping the outsides of your ears plenty warm and toasty.

So, when Jack Frost is nipping at your nose (and ears!), consider putting on your favorite pair of hearing protection earmuffs. They're the perfect winter double-whammy: they'll keep your ears safe -- from sound AND snow.

And it's probably time to retire that reindeer sweater for another year, anyway.

Until next time, be safe (and warm!) and do the right thing.

--Tom "Dr. Earplug" Bergman

P.S. Those of you who've taken the time to subscribe to our newsletter have already had a chance to read this and other articles -- so if you're subscribed to our newsletter and think you're seeing double, don't get your eyes checked! Of course, we want to share as much information as possible with all our visitors, so we do our best to make sure most of our newsletter articles make it into the blog... eventually. But if you want to be among the first to catch articles like this on ear care, hearing protection, earmuffs, and all things earplug-related, the newsletter sign-up box on the right is your first-class ticket to the freshest EPSS updates.

Comments

[childrens snow boots]

If you are often exposed to noise from different sources such as busy streets, hand drills, motorbikes, disco music, car horns, your iPod, rock concerts, it's high time you bought a pair of ear protectors such as muffs and plugs.

[Tom Bergman]

Thanks for your comment & great examples of the kind of common noises that can take a toll on our hearing! We sometimes don't realize how much sound we're really being exposed to on a daily basis. Car horns alone can generate up to 90dB of sound -- each. We certainly live in a noisy world!