I love my Apple Watch. It not only helps me tell the time, it also keeps me connected to the people that I love by alerting me to texts and calls that I might otherwise miss when I don’t hear my phone. It can remind me of upcoming appointments and to stand up every hour to get some exercise. With the recent launch of WatchOS 6, it has a new trick — protecting my hearing.
The newly launched Noise app measures the environmental sounds around you and alerts you when things get dangerously loud. I often pull up a decibel reader app on my phone to measure noise when the background buzz gets to be too much, but with this app — it happens automatically. It doesn’t record or save the sounds, but it does keep the measurement levels, allowing me to revisit my exposure over the past day or week or month via the Health app on my phone. Pretty cool.
Noise App Alerts You To Loud Sounds
My hearing loss makes me sensitive to loud sounds so I added the Noise app to my Apple Watch face for easy access. A simple glance at my wrist tells me the ambient environmental sound levels. It has been funny (or maybe sad) to walk down the streets of NYC where I live and see the green circle indicating OK noise levels turn to yellow as a truck rumbles by or a taxi’s breaks squeal.
The app constantly scans environmental noise (unless you turn this off) but only sends you a warning notification when the average sound level over 3 minutes reaches or exceeds a level of your choosing. You can set this level as Off or to any 5 decibel interval between 80 and 100. For reference, the safe exposure time is listed under each choice. For example, under 90 decibels it says, “Limit: 30 min/day.” That seemed high to me.
Below you can see the readout from a recent concert I attended at Radio City Hall. I wore my noise-cancelling headphones of course! The display shows the decibel range during each 2 minute gray bar. The blue shaded bars indicate the times my watch alerted me to problematic noise per the settings described above. As concerts go — a pretty tame one, but still not safe without hearing protection.
Warnings Of “Temporary” Hearing Loss Misleading?
Exploring the app fully, I found more information, but some of it seemed misleading. For example, a more detailed explanation of 90 dB states, “Around 30 minutes a day at this level can cause temporary hearing loss. The weekly limit at this level is 4 hours.” The word temporary is used in all descriptions up through 100 dB.
While there is some evidence that a temporary threshold shift can occur after exposure to loud sounds or after a concert, there is also research that shows while the initial effects may seem “temporary,” the damage is actually permanent. An audiologist I contacted via email confirmed, “Any exceedance of the recommended daily noise dosages can result in PERMANENT hearing loss.”
If you dig deeper into the Health app on the iPhone, the literature states that long-term repeated exposure to loud sounds can cause permanent hearing loss, but I worry that leading with temporary does not set the right tone.
While I applaud Apple for highlighting the importance of protecting your hearing when things get loud, if the Noise app is to truly help prevent hearing loss, it cannot sugarcoat the information. Downplaying the permanent damage that can result from noise exposure provides easy rationalizations and ready-made excuses that people can use to ignore the noise alerts they do receive.
I hope Apple will consider updating the language used to more accurately reflect the permanent nature of unsafe noise exposure. You can share your thoughts on this topic with Apple by emailing accessibility@apple.com.
Readers, would you like to be automatically notified when noise levels are unsafe?
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I agree…the damage would be permanent.
I will write to Apple…but, I sure hope they respond accordingly.
I rarely get responses from them.
I am also using the noise app feature, although…I really don’t need an app to tell me when I feel pain from loud noise!
It’s a valiant effort and I commend Apple for bringing awareness to the issue.
I have noise-induced, sensorineural hearing loss, because, as a teenager, I used to crank up the volume on my boom box and blast it close to my ears!
Dumb dumb dumb.
Try telling this to young people today,
They just laugh in my face.
Oh well.
You can lead a horse to water….etc.
Please do email/write to them. They seem very open to feedback on this subject. Thank you for your comment.
They “seem” open, but…don’t get your hopes raised too high.
They receive thousands..millions of comments, each day…the fact that they even recognize hearing loss as an important issue to tackle, they really don’t quite “get it”.
The typical employee, is young and vital and…well…probably doesn’t experience hearing loss, or other disabilities.
It’s the nature of that culture…young, vital people, who don’t quite get it.
Great post, Shari! Thanks
Thanks for reading!
I just finished reading David Owen’s excellent book, Volume Control, in which he discusses and debunks the received wisdom that the hearing loss after one time exposure to loud sound is temporary. Although an audiogram may show recovery a few days later, damage to hair cells and synapses may continue to increase. This discussion is a small part of the book which I highly recommend.
Sounds like an interesting book. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
absolutely correct. I can tell you, as retired speech pathologist, having studied audiology, as well (part of our curriculum), when damage is done to those hair cells in cochlea, they do NOT come back, as functional.
I concur. This is an excellent book, lots of info. — David Owen is such a fluid writer, the book is not only informative, it is a joy to read — even though the subject is daunting!
The author wore noise cancelling head phones at a concert at Radio City Music Hall. How can one hear the concert when using noise cancelling head phones?
It is so loud I can still hear. I find them helpful to block out the background buzz so I can hear the voices better. Give it a try!
Were you using something with active noise cancelling (e.g. Apple Airpods Pro)?
Bose noise cancelling headphones (over the ear) with the noise cancelling feature turned on.
As an individual who lost all high frequencies at 15 months old in both ears but didn’t start wearing hearing aids every waking moment until age 27, I am certain loud noises cause permanent damage. All that was available to me at the time were analogs which was like blasting a rock concert in my ears the entire time I was wearing them. Over the years, I needed more and more power to hear. I did eventually switch to digital aids but by then the damage was done. I now hear with a cochlear implant. Loud noises definitely diminish hearing over time.
Thank you for sharing your perspective.
For those of us who do not have an Apple watch, but do have an iPhone, there is a FREE app to measure noise level. You can record the noise level of your environment(s) and identify where it was recorded… Highly recommended!
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/noise/app.html
Thank you for sharing the information.
This is the first argument for preferring an Apple Watch over my Fitbit. Thanks.
Glad you found it helpful. Thanks for your comment.