Union health ministry caution against earphones, discourages unnecessary use
Telegraph | 23 February 2025
The Union health ministry has asked states and medical colleges across the country to discourage unnecessary use of earphones and headphones, citing studies implicating prolonged and excessive exposure to loud sounds in irreversible hearing loss.
A February 20 letter from the ministry to chief secretaries of all states and heads of all medical colleges across India says “hearing loss associated with the use of earphones and headphones” is “an important but often overlooked health issue”.
It is “especially affecting the younger age group”, the letter says.
The letter discourages unnecessary use of the gadgets “even at normal volumes”.
The volume of these devices should not exceed 50 decibels, it says.
The letter also urged the use of these devices for “not more than 2 hours per day”.
Frequent breaks during listening sessions have been advised.
“Evidence has shown that there is a temporary shift of hearing acuity, after prolonged use of an earphone/headphones/ear plug, which is generally a high-frequency hearing loss that is not easily noticeable in day-to-day life,” the letter says.
Diptanshu Mukherjee, an associate professor of ENT at Medical College Kolkata, said hearing acuity means the precision of hearing.
“There is a shift in the ability to hear precisely. Since the Covid pandemic, we have noticed a greater number of young people coming to us with complaints that they were hearing less. They also complain about an abnormal continuous ringing sound in the ear called tinnitus,” said Mukherjee.
Doctors said online classes or work from home that requires prolonged online calls have worsened the situation since the pandemic.
The letter from the health ministry also highlights tinnitus.
It says: “Certain individuals may also develop a persistent ear ringing/buzzing noise called tinnitus as a result of prolonged unsafe use. The rise of online gaming culture is also putting children at risk of exposure to sudden impulse of high decibel sounds.”
According to experts, medical evidence suggests that auditory health risk is highest for people using personal audio systems for more than an hour a day at more than 50 decibels over a five-year period.
The American Academy of Paediatrics had in 2023 flagged the need to reduce noise risks to children amid concerns about the possible impact of prolonged exposure to personal listening devices on children.
“Young children are more vulnerable to potential harm from noise exposure,” Susan Woolford, an associate professor in the child health and evaluation research unit at the University of Michigan in the US, said through a university press release last year.
“Their ear canals are smaller than adults, intensifying perceived sound levels,” she said.
Woolford cautioned that noise exposure among children can also impact sleep, academic learning, stress levels and even blood pressure.
The Union health ministry’s letter also advises the use of “well-fitted or noise-cancelling headphones”.
Doctors said over-the-ear headphones, not ones that are plugged into the ear canals, are better as they cancel out ambient noise.
“If the outside noise is cancelled out or suppressed, then the user will not require to raise the volume while using the headphone. This will be better for the ears. There are some professions where the use of headphones is unavoidable. They should try and use over-the-ear headphones,” said Shouvanik Satpathy, the clinical lead and senior consultant of ENT, head and neck surgery department at Peerless Hospital.
Headphones that are directly plugged into the ear canals bypass the protective mechanism of ears like the pinna and the undulations in the outer ear that modify and moderate the sound reaching the inner ear, said Satpathy.
“Once hearing is permanently impaired, normal hearing will never ever be restored by hearing aids or cochlear implants,” the health ministry letter said.