Help a nerd who doesn't get out much, Pt. 2

[prog]

I enjoyed the concert, though it was very loud and the acoustics were terrible.

Twelve hours and a solid sleep later, my ears are still ringing, and I have a physical sensation of cotton lodged into both of them. Is this... should I be worried? I don't know.

A friend who goes to many concerts tells me that, doy, they sell earplugs at the bar, you know, and everyone who isn't dumb wears them. I didn't know this. I don't know anything!! I am a nerd who doesn't get out much.

Seriously though, I'm starting to get a little concerned about this.

Comments

Re: pete townshend

[prog.livejournal.com]

Nah, I'm not being hypochondriacky about this. I honestly have never had the cotton-ear feeling before, nor have I have tinnitus that lasted more than a few hours, so it freaked me out a little. I'm reassured now that it'll go away. (I use the "nerd" subject header because I assume that if I had a more outgoing youth, I'd have known all this as common knowledge by now.)

Re: pete townshend

[radtea.livejournal.com]

Subway trains are about 100 dBA (decibels weighted to human ear response). Concerts (rear seats) are 110 dBA, which thanks to the logarithmic goodness of decibels comes out to a factor of two higher.

Assume train noise lasts 5 seconds. So if you take the train twice a day, 250 days a year, you'll accumulate 20 minutes of exposure time at an intensity half that of a concert. 40 minutes if it lasts 10 seconds, assuming that that full 10 seconds is at the peak intensity, which it isn't.

It's worth protecting yourself against high environmental levels. But given the considerably greater hazard of concerts there is nothing inconsistent about protecting against concerts even if you don't worry about trains.