Visiting a festival makes you live longer, but shortens the lifespan of your hearing - Millions of young people are at risk of permanent hearing damage

British research has found that visiting a concert or festival can extend your lifespan by up to nine years. However, enjoying a night of live music also has a downside for your health, as Newsweek recently reported: ‘If you want to live to an advanced age and maintain your hearing ability, that's for another study.’ Alpine Hearing Protection already successfully conducted this research over 20 years ago. Alpine earplugs with an acoustic filter extend the lifespan of your hearing.

Researchers from O2 and the Goldsmiths College of the University of London discovered that attending live music events makes you live longer. Regularly visiting festivals and concerts also has a very positive impact on your mental health. Concertgoers had an elevated self-image and a stronger connection with others. However, loud music can have a less positive effect on your physical health. An average concert or festival could cause hearing damage within five minutes. Over 1,100,000,000 young people around the globe are at the risk of hearing damage from loud music. Listening to live music extends your life but can significantly reduce the lifespan of your hearing. Since the festival season is about to start, Alpine Hearing Protection believes that this is the moment to make young people aware and protect them against this silent killer.

Permanent hearing damage within five minutes
Your hearing can already get damaged starting at 80 dB. You can safely reside at a noise level of 80 dB for eight hours a day. This time reduces by half every three additional decibels. The music at a concert or festivals produced an average of 103 dB of sound. If you do not protect your hearing at a music event, you may suffer permanent hearing damage within minutes. Hearing damage manifests itself in various forms such as hypersensitivity to sound, hearing distorted sounds, or suffering from a permanent beep or noise in your ears. We call this last disorder tinnitus. The number of tinnitus patients around the globe increases every year. This has a great financial impact on society. Tinnitus affects labour productivity, for example, due to a loss of concentration, fatigue or insomnia.

Hard noise is the new smoking
A recent study by Alpine Hearing Protection shows that 57% of the festival visitors in the Netherlands suffer from hearing damage and that 60 percent never wear earplugs. This is the case even though the Netherlands is a forerunner in the field of information and prevention when it comes to hearing damage. Alpine is active in more than 50 countries and knows that there is an even greater lack of knowledge about the risks of loud noise abroad. Sjoerd Groot, International Marketing Manager at Alpine Hearing Protection: “The figures for festival visitors with hearing damage are already worrying in the Netherlands, but we suspect that these figures are many times higher worldwide. Hard noise is the new smoking. Making people aware of the risks of smoking has taken years, and we now face the same challenge when it comes to educating people about the risks of exposure to loud noise.”

Live longer while enjoying your hearing
Most people are familiar with the old-fashioned foam earplug but not with the filter earplugs that have been developed specifically for festivals and concerts. There are quite a few misconceptions about hearing protection. People are afraid that they will no longer be able to enjoy the music and that they will be unable to understand each other. Earplugs are not considered hip and people assume that wearing them is unpleasant. The Alpine filter earplugs offer a solution. The thermoplastic material of the filter earplugs adopts the shape of the ear canal thanks to the heat of the ear and you can comfortably wear them all day. The Alpine earplugs are equipped with a special acoustic filter which maintains the music quality and ensures that conversations maintain perfectly intelligible. The filter earplugs are also available in a transparent design which makes them hardly noticeable.

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About Alpine Hearing Protection

Alpine Netherlands was established in 1995 and is one of the few manufacturers in the world with hearing protection as its core business. Alpine wants to make hearing protection as accessible as possible and is committed to raising awareness about hearing loss. The Alpine earplugs are sold worldwide in over 50 countries. All Alpine products are officially tested by independent test bodies and have the CE-mark. Alpine offers hearing protection for motorcyclists, musicians, children, travellers, water sports enthusiasts, the nightlife crowd and people with sleeping problems.

Research accountability statement
The research was performed among a representative sample of N=1.014 Dutch people between the age of 18 to 50 years in March 2018. The results are reweighted by gender and age (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek 2017).

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