Tinnitus, which means “to ring like a bell” in Latin, is the medical term for ringing of the ears. It has also been described as buzzing, hissing or other noises.
The most common cause of tinnitus is exposure to loud noises. People in the armed forces must deal with noise levels well above those recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which was set at 85 decibels. NIOSH had stated that noises above 85 decibels can cause hearing loss.
In contrast, a single gun shot usually falls in the 140 decibel range. It should come as no surprise, then, that the American Tinnitus Association (ATA) recently reported a study that shows that 49% of all soldiers exposed to explosive blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan had tinnitus.
Why should this be? Aren’t employees of the armed forces entitled to the same hearing protection as employees of private industries?
An article in New Yorker by Jerome Groopman (2/9/2009) highlights this problem. Mr. Groopman interviewed Perry Jefferies, a forty-eight-year-old retired Army first sergeant.
In the interview, Jefferies described how during basic training, he was only able to wear one earplug, so he could still hear the instructor. Worse, when he was learning how to fire a .50-calibre gun from an armored personnel carrier, he did not wear any hearing protection.
The same holds true for his deployment. Although required to carry earplugs, he could not wear them, because he had to listen to radios in the Humvee and respond.
Now, Jefferies suffers from hearing loss, and he is receiving disability compensation for tinnitus, as do 619,825 other veterans receiving disability compensation for service-connected tinnitus (National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research).
A study from the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine (2004) stated that the army failed to adequately educate its troops about hearing loss prevention, to supply them with hearing protection devices, and that soldiers with blast injuries were not properly referred for evaluation and treatment.
Since publication of this study, the U.S. Military is attempting to take corrective measures by supplying its soldiers in combat with high-tech earplugs that either reduce the decibel levels of loud noises or filter them out completely. In addition, the military is mandated to instruct soldiers in their usage.
For those who are suffering from tinnitus, Princeton Sciences has developed a dietary supplement, known as TinnitusDX, that is recommended by doctors across the United States.
