Examining the noisy life of the college musician: weeklong noise dosimetry of music and non-music activities

Abstract

Objective: To examine the contribution of all daily activities, including non-music activities, to the overall noise exposure of college student musicians, and to compare their “noise lives” with those of non-musician college students. Design: Continuous week-long dosimetry measurements were collected on student musicians and non-musicians. During the measurement period, participants recorded their daily activities in journals. Study sample: 22 musicians and 40 non-musicians, all students (aged 18–24 years) at the University of Connecticut. Results: On every day of the week, musicians experienced significantly higher average exposure levels than did non-musicians. Nearly half (47%) of the musicians’ days exceeded a daily dose of 100%, compared with 10% of the non-musicians’ days. When the exposure due to music activities was removed, musicians still led noisier lives, largely due to participation in noisier social activities. For some musicians, non-music activities contributed a larger share of their total weekly noise exposure than did their music activities. Conclusions: Compared with their non-musician peers, college student musicians are at higher risk for noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). On a weekly basis, non-music activities may pose a greater risk to some musicians than music activities. Thus, hearing health education for musicians should include information about the contribution of lifestyle factors outside of music to NIHL risk.

Key Words:

• Hearing conservation/hearing loss prevention
• instrumentation
• noise
• behavioural measures

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by a grant from the American Hearing Research Foundation awarded to JT and ES. We acknowledge Christine Njuki for her input on the experimental protocol, Ryan Masi and Sarah Camera for their assistance with data collection and coding, Meghan Brady for her assistance with participant scheduling and data processing, Maggie Small, Meghan Robitaille, Michaela Caporaso, Elizabeth Gernert, and Kristine Aikens for their assistance with data coding, and Christopher Briody and Marisa Husereau for their assistance with gathering pilot data. Results from this study were presented at the February 2017 conference of the National Hearing Conservation Association in San Antonio, TX, USA.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no declarations of interest.

Notes

1. The reader may have noticed that the weekly L_EX,8h in Figure 4 are higher than might be inferred from an examination of Figures 2 and 3. This is because the value of the weekly L_EX,8h is sensitive to very high daily exposure levels in its calculation.