Hear Now: Recycling Hearing Aids
The list of recyclables is always growing.
Here's yet another item that doesn't need to go into the landfill: hearing aids.
The Starkey Hearing Foundation has an international outreach system that includes a program called Hear Now. It collects hearing aids for recycling purposes. Any make or model, regardless of age, can be donated to the hearing aid recycling program. All donations are tax deductible, and a letter of acknowledgment will be sent to all identified donors.
Other programs include the Hearing Angel, where donors can donate so that hearing aids can be given to children who need them. There's also Sound Matters, an extremely important program that raises social awareness of healthy hearing, prevention of hearing damage, and regular hearing check-ups.
For more information, please click here.
On the subject of healthy hearing, the April 26 issue of Time magazine contained an article that featured earbuds with the title "Listen Up Before It's Too Late."
The writer suggested that more expensive, ambient noise-reducing earbuds are worth it, and ends the article by saying it's either we pay more now for earbuds that don't make us crank up the volume to drown out ambient noise, or pay later for a hearing aid.
Apparently, regular earbuds sit outside the ear canal which leaves room for lots of ambient noise to seep in, making us turn up the volume dangerously high to compensate.
The average individual can tolerate up to 8 hours of sound at 85 decibels (the sound of busy city traffic) before suffering hearing damage. Beth Orliss, an audiologist in New York City, says that for every 5 decibels over 85 decibels, the exposure time before irreversible damage gets cut in half.
In-ear Monitors (IEM) isolate outside noise much better than regular earbuds because they are inserted into the ear canal. Currently, several brands range in price from $39 to $399.
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