18 dec 2023 om 00:22
It’s not just your eyes and hands that are at risk of being injured when lighting fireworks. Your ears can also be damaged, says SafetyNL, which conducted research among more than two thousand Dutch people between the ages of twenty and 75.
According to the study, during the past New Year’s Eve, 6 percent of adults who lit fireworks or watched them outside suffered some form of hearing damage. “Consider a ringing in the ear, deafness, a dull feeling or distortion of sound,” the organization reports.
In addition, according to VeiligheidNL, other protective measures, such as safety glasses, are worn less and less. The organization calls on everyone to protect eyes and ears and receives support from doctors and medical centers, among others.
“It comes as no surprise that more than 500,000 Dutch adults have probably suffered hearing damage,” the organization says. “The use of hearing protection has been relatively low for years. Of the adult Dutch people who lit fireworks last New Year’s Eve, only 15 percent used hearing protection, while this applied to only 4 percent of the viewing adults.”
“A single loud bang can destroy things in your ear and you usually notice it immediately. But even if you don’t feel it immediately, you can suffer hearing damage. Every person can only handle a certain amount of loud noise. You have to see it as a bucket. It becomes fuller and fuller and one day it will overflow,” says Louise Straatman, ENT specialist at UMC Utrecht.
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2023-12-17 23:22:53
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