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Hello, I was wondering if you use ear protection when using air/electric tools such as air hammer whizzer grinder etc. Reason being is that I was a mechanic for years and never did. Now I have a constant ringing in my ears (tinnitus)that would have been avoidable if only I wore a 10 dollar pair of ear plugs or muffs. My doctor states that “There is NO cure for this”. Anyways I am hooked on your vid’s keep up the great work!
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I use ear protection especially for things like grinding or air hammers only got 1 set of ears and as you say no cure for the tinnitus.
Ear protection should always be worn when using air tools, hammering metal, using machinery etc. Any loud or high frequency sound can damage your hearing.
Not only do I use ear protection for that kind of stuff, but it’s shop courtesy where I work that one announces to the rest of the shop when they are about to make harmful amounts of noise. Not everyone in the shop bothers to invest in having ear protection on-hand, but at least that courtesy is in place. As a positive side effect of that, techs usually try to avoid bringing out the air hammers and such. Not that it can be helped many times here in the salt belt.
I am sorry, I couldn’t hear what all you guys were talking about it wasn’t in all caps. 😛
Yeah I rarely wear ear protection. I probably should though especially with the things I work on. Though surprisingly we don’ have a lot of people that grind or use the air hammer in our shop but, our 1″ and 3/4″ impacts and the engines alone sure are loud.
For air hammers or similarly loud tools I do. More commonly I wear them because I might be working close to a darn loud turbine engine.
I do, however try to always wear safety glasses when using power tools. Or even just a hammer. I’ve been in hangars where it was company policy to have eye protection on just to get in the door. Good policy IMHO.
Always since the first time I screwed up and didn’t. Came off the SO truck with my brand new air hammer in hand to do a recall that involved knocking a few frame rivets off to add a plate for the fuel tank. About an hour under the truck followed by about 3 hours of ringing ears…….lesson learned.
I guess some of us, as new people to the repair industry, are blinded by our excitement that we don’t really think of safety issues such as noise pollution and the use of hearing protection. But apparently 90 dB is all it takes to impair hearing? Since we don’t really think about anything in terms of decibels dB, it would be difficult to a determine how much sound is regarded as too much. But I believe I remember reading in one of my introductory text books that if you can’t speak in a normal tone (feel like you are shouting over your work) while working, you are working in an area with too much noise.
I guess I’d better get some earplugs.Thats funny, when you said no way to judge 90db I thought I’d reply that I wear mine while doing anything I can’t hear a normal conversation over.
I suspect that I’ve had a hearing problem since I was a kid but it was made worse by years of air tools, too many rock concerts, my own guitars, and wind buffeting from motorcycle trips.
The 50%+ hearing loss and tinnitus is bad but sometimes I think what is worse is dealing with people who don’t seem to understand the disability.
You see so many people who deal with the public in their jobs and they speak very low and/or mumble their speech.
Even if they’re told 4 times that I have a hearing issue and they need to speak up they seem unable to.
Some people have clear coherent voices and they don’t mumble. I can carry on a conversation with these people just fine.It’s not all me because my wife has excellent hearing and she says that she can’t even understand some of them.
Being 23 with tinnitus and constant loud ringing blows. Can’t sleep at times without background noise. Hard to hear. Of course all the loud race cars, machinery and equipment doesn’t help either.
Wear your protective equipment all the time.
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