Noisy leisure time activities in teenage boys

An increasing incidence of a high tone hearing loss in teenagers has been demonstrated in recent years. The hearing loss is sensorineural, and looks like an early noise-induced hearing loss with a dip at 6 kHz. It has been discussed whether this is due to noisy leisure time activities or to heredity. Five hundred thirty-eight boys from technical vocational schools were questioned with regard to leisure time activities. Hearing tests showed a normal mean audiogram with a marked dip at 6 kHz. Fifteen percent of the boys showed some hearing loss; more than 20 db HL on one frequency. Many teenagers had noisy leisure time activities, particularly related to pop music. No correlations could be found between hearing loss and the leisure time activities. The only marked correlation was for hearing loss at 4, 6 and 8 kHz on the left ear and a family history of hearing loss. We argue that heredity deficiency could reveal itself as an increased noise sensitivity with a resultant early noise-induced hearing loss at a young age. Much more attention should be devoted to the noisy activities of teenagers.