Ear Plug Superstore - Official Blog

Fact or Fiction: Can Cotton Balls Protect Your Ears?

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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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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