How Much Hearing Protection do You Get From Putting Your Fingers in Your Ears?

According to E-A-R, you can get about 25dB of noise reduction by inserting your fingers into your ear canals.

Now, when I was back in grade school, my health teacher informed us that the only part of your body that's safe to stick in your ears are your elbows. (And oh, how I tried.) But if you don't have the same respect for my old health teacher that I do, there are still several other good reasons to avoid sticking your fingers in your ears:

First, 25dB of noise reduction sounds optimistic to me. Everyone's ear canals are a different shape and size -- and they're not necessarily built "to scale" with the rest of the body. A teenage girl might have larger ear canals than a 6-foot-tall linebacker. Complicating things further, the width of the ear canal doesn't necessarily correspond to the size of the outer (visible part) of the ear, either! So unless your ear canals and your fingers just happen to be the same size, jamming your fingers in your ears won't do you much good.

What's worse, you could damage your ears. The skin inside your ear canal is very sensitive. Unless your nails are short, smooth, and clean, inserting a finger into your ear could damage that delicate skin. And introducing any non-sterile foreign object into your ears can cause or contribute to ear infections. Keep in mind that even cotton swabs such as Q-Tips should NOT be inserted down into your ear canals for the very same reasons!

And of course, you can't use a power tool or fire a weapon with your fingers stuck in your ears. With your hands busy protecting your ears, you can't do most of the noisy things you'd need hearing protection for in the first place! Overall, as far as hearing protection goes, your fingers are a pretty inefficient solution.

Still, some protection is better than none. E-A-R recommends that, for sound protection in a pinch, you can tilt your head to the side, stick your finger in one ear, and press the other ear against your shoulder hard enough to get a bit of an acoustic seal.

For my part, I suggest an even simpler solution: keep some foam ear plugs in your pocket or purse, just in case.

And failing that, remember: get away from the noise. Backing up by a mere ten feet can make a big difference in the amount of noise you're dosed with... so move yourself away from the source of the sound, and you can save your ears some wear and tear -- hands-free.

 

Until next time, be safe and love your ears!
--Sarah Bergman, Web Developer

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Comments

[martin]

Hello,

I had 2 militiary jets come over my home pretty low. I panicked and pushed the tangus part of ear into canal as hard as I could. Even with that it felt very loud and my existing Tinnitus is now worse. I'm scared damage has occurred.

My window was wide open, I have wood floors and the way the condos work it does make an echo/amply of noise sadly. I'm scared beyond scared.

Do you think I reduced the sound enough?

[Tom Bergman]

By now your tinnitus may have returned to its previous level, or not. It is impossible for me to say might have happened, but here are some thoughts about the experience as you described it.

Hearing damage is incurred as a function of time and volume. The louder it is, the less time it takes to cause damage. A jet engine produces about 140 dB at 100 feet away. Assuming the jets were at the legal minimum altitude of 1000 feet, 140 dB would be a safe estimate of the maximum noise to which you were exposed. Now, assuming the smart guys at E-A-R are correct, and I believe this is also a conservative estimate at 25 dB protection by putting fingers in your ears, you would have been exposed to 115 dB (140-25=115).

Now, for the time element: Assuming the jets were traveling at 300-350 mph, that would be 440-513 feet per second, so it would take about 4-5 seconds for the jets to pass over your location close enough to apply significant volume to your ears. Using the 5 second number, then, you would have been exposed to 115 dB for 5 seconds. OSHA guidelines permit a maximum daily exposure to 115 dB of .25 hours, or 15 minutes. That means your exposure is literally just a few thousandths of the amount of time it would take for that level of noise exposure to result in permanent hearing damage.

All that said, there are any number of elements to this story that could compromise these analytic results. For instance, if you did not put your fingers into your ears fast enough, you could have been exposed to louder sound for longer than I assumed, also the jets could have been lower, flying slower, or had louder engines than I assumed.

All in all, I would suggest that if your increased tinnitus has not subsided, you should visit an audiologist to have a checkup and discuss options with them. In general, I am a big fan of TRT (tinnitus retraining therapy) for the treatment of tinnitus. There is a link to the therapy on this page in our store. http://www.earplugstore.com/newsound-tinnitus-masker-pair.html

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.