Hearing rates improving over time, study says
Impairment falling in white Americans
NEW YORK – Sweet news for baby boomers: Despite all those warnings that loud rock music would damage their ears, their generation appears to have better hearing than their parents did.
In fact, a new study suggests that the rate of hearing problems at ages 45 to 75 has been dropping for years, at least among white Americans.
“I’m less likely to have a hearing loss when I get to be 70 years old than my grandmother did when she was 70,” said Karen Cruickshanks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of the study.
Experts theorize there may be several reasons for the finding, like fewer very noisy jobs and better ear protection at worksites, immunizations and antibiotics that prevented certain diseases, and maybe even a decline in smoking.
Experts praised the work but agreed that scientists now must see if the pattern holds up outside of its largely white participants. They also said the result doesn’t mean it’s safe to blast loud music into your ears from an iPod for hours on end.
Cruickshanks, colleague Weihai Zhan and others reported their work recently in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
They analyzed the results of hearing tests given to about 5,300 people who were at least 45 years old and born between 1902 and 1962. The tests were done between 1993 and 2008, and many participants were tested at five-year intervals.
The researchers noted how many tests showed at least mild hearing loss. Then they looked to see if the rate of impairment at given ages was affected by when the person was born.
For example, take the results for men in their early 60s. The impairment rate was 58 percent for men born between 1930 and 1934. For men born just five years later, the rate was about 50 percent. And for men born between 1945 and 1949, the oldest baby boomers, the rate was only about 36 percent.
Overall, for a given age group, men showed on average a 13 percent drop in the risk of impairment for every five-year increase in the date of their birth. For women, the decrease was about 6 percent.
The researchers are now trying to uncover reasons for the decline.