You may be surprised to discover that reindeer herding is a hazardous, noisy profession, what with all those braying reindeer and roaring snow mobiles. However, Finnish researchers have found that hearing loss among the herders is not just about nerve damage from noise exposure. Those tundra hands who escaped job stress through smoking, particularly those indulging in more than 144,000 cigarettes (a pack a day for 20 years), had significantly more hearing loss than their non-smoking herd-buddies.
Lest you think this danger does not relate to your daily life, this finding was repeated in a study of 1,500 Japanese office workers exposed to nothing more than the ringing of phones and computer games, There, the risk of high-tone hearing loss among heavy smokers was more than two times greater than those who abstained.
No wonder our pleas to our smoking friends to quit sometimes fall on deaf ears.
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2 comments:
No pun intended, I'm sure....LOL
Well, I suppose it is a very good thing that I quit smoking my 2 packs+ a day after 23 years, since my hearing loss is already quite advanced. Had I continued smoking, I may be completely deaf by now (if not dead)!
LOL! Where do you find these studies! Hmm...my mother continues to defy the odds. Her hearing seems to be A-OK! My father-in-law, on the hand, who never smoked, seems to be going a big deaf. However, he did serve in WW 2 so maybe it was that artillery going off too near his ears!
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