Somehow, sticking cotton balls in your ears has become one of the most popular myths about how to protect your hearing. Maybe it's just an old wives tale or urban legend. Maybe a hundred years ago, people didn't have anything else to use as a makeshift ear plug. Or perhaps the cotton ball myth is actually a conspiracy started long ago by the folks who make cotton balls.
Whatever the reason, some folks still seem to believe that cotton balls in the ears are a good solution for protecting your hearing.
They are not.
NIOSH and the CDC say, "cotton balls and other make-shift protectors can let noise pass right through." The West Virginia University Dept. of Environmental Health and Safety backs that idea, asserting that "cotton balls do not effectively provide hearing protection." And in case that wasn't clear enough, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry takes a firm stance stating that cotton balls provide NO protection whatsoever. Case closed.
...or is it?
One lonely article from the NASD and Kansas State University reports that cotton balls in the ears do provide about 7dB of protection from noise.
That's not nothing... but it's also not likely to be helpful in most situations. To put that in perspective, 7dB of protection isn't enough to block out a whisper, a gentle breeze, or a single leaf rustling. Even normal breathing registers at 10dB, and a quiet library comes in at around 30dB. So even though cotton balls technically do block a tiny bit of noise, they're just not going to protect your hearing.
Myth busted.
Interestingly, the only thing cotton balls do seem to be good for (at least when it comes to protecting your ears) is keeping water out. In a 2004 article from the journal of Clinical Otolaryngology in which various methods of keeping water out of the ears were tested, cotton wool soaked with petroleum jelly was actually found to be quite effective at keeping the ears dry.
Exactly how they got the petroleum jelly out of their ears afterwards (and whether that was found to be more pleasant than actually getting a little water in the ears) was not mentioned in the study.
Still, while cotton balls alone won't protect your ears from sound, cotton is still used as an ingredient in many popular moldable ear plugs -- particularly those used for sleeping. When combined with wax, strands of cotton can help hold a moldable ear plug together and keep it from falling apart, while also adding some of the appealing softness of ye olde cotton ball. Flent's Ear Stopples and Quies Boules are two enormously popular ear plugs that give cotton a very real -- and very effective -- role in helping to protect your hearing.
Until next time, be safe and love your ears!
--Sarah Bergman, Web Developer
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