Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, about the damage done by pollution, “is widely credited with launching the environmental movement in the West” ( Wikipedia ). Along similar but narrower lines, last week’s USA Today had an article by Joyce Cohen about hearing damage caused by being in a marching band. It begins:
There’s no bigger booster of his marching band than Mark Claffey. “I am a total band nerd!” declares Claffey, a drummer for the Golden Falcons at Franklin Heights High School in Columbus, Ohio.
There’s just one downside. At age 17, he has painful ear damage.
He says that, after indoor rehearsals, his ears started hurting, then ringing.
Now, he’s abnormally sensitive to sound. If someone cranks the car radio, “I get a sharp shooting pain in my right ear,” says Claffey. . . .
It’s the dirty little secret of the halftime show: Marching band . . . can cause irreparable hearing damage, according to Brian Fligor, director of diagnostic audiology at Children’s Hospital in Boston.
The director of a professional group of music teachers claimed that knowledge of this problem is fairly new. That’s absurd, Joyce said. Stories about hearing problems among musicians have been published in medical and professional journals for at least two decades. Music teachers don’t acknowledge their own hearing problems, several experts told her, because doing so could endanger their livelihoods. Band parents, known for their fanaticism, were sometimes dismissive. They claimed that pain and ringing in the ears are normal.
The Indianapolis Star, published by Gannett, which also owns USA Today, reprinted the article. On the newspaper’s forums, readers started a debate about whether there should be laws to protect students’ hearing.
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, about the damage done by pollution, “is widely credited with launching the environmental movement in the West” ( Wikipedia ). Along similar but narrower lines, last week’s USA Today had an article by Joyce Cohen about hearing damage caused by being in a marching band. It begins:
The director of a professional group of music teachers claimed that knowledge of this problem is fairly new. That’s absurd, Joyce said. Stories about hearing problems among musicians have been published in medical and professional journals for at least two decades. Music teachers don’t acknowledge their own hearing problems, several experts told her, because doing so could endanger their livelihoods. Band parents, known for their fanaticism, were sometimes dismissive. They claimed that pain and ringing in the ears are normal.
The Indianapolis Star, published by Gannett, which also owns USA Today, reprinted the article. On the newspaper’s forums, readers started a debate about whether there should be laws to protect students’ hearing.