Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

Cycle News 1971 01 26

Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles

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~he~:~chO f C~~~a;y~rg~~~seM~~:tni~~ ~ Again. •••? What's That If you find yourself saying things like that now and again, you might be going slowly deaf. Deafness' is something that we usually associate with older people, but it's actually no respecter of age. . To get right to the point, if you To sum up the hazard, anyone speQd a lot of your time· around exposed to un-muffled motorcycles for competition motorcycles, it would be any significant period of time will suffer surprising if you were not going slowly some permanent hearing loss. Only the deaf. Each .time a person is exposed to amount of less is open to question. The noise in excess of a certain decibel amount depends upon heredity, age, sex .figure, he suffers what otologists (ear and the exact conditions of exposure. specialists) call a "temporary threshhold To protect your hearing, several steps shift." In English, this means that he can be taken. First, quiet your own loses part of his hearing. You can bike, which is the most dangerous observe this phenomenon very source of sound. Next try to avoid those spectacularly when the announcer tries rac es where you are subject to to. interview the winner of the continuous .sound bombardment. In Indianapolis 500 race. Invariably, the order of hazard, the most dangerous racer appears to be almost totally deaf. races would seem to be TT-scrambles, The same thing occurs to motorcyclists, followed by motocross, then desert particularly those who race motocross. races, the drags, then enduros and As stated, this is a temporary finally trials. phenomenon. Given a little time, your Obviously it would be to everyone's hearing will slowly return to almost benefit to have all competition bikes normal. Almost is the key word. It quieted down somewhat. Not only would danger to hearing b~ decreased, but our popularity and the popularity of our sport would be increased. Begin your own friend-to-friend campaign for silencers. ' If you must race .in noisy events, wear ear plugs and get away from the noise as often as possible to give your ears a chance to recover. Get behind or ·in your truck between events, and park as far awa y as prac tical. Th e b es tear plugs, according to Dr. Fred Linthicum of the Otolo~ic Medical Group, are individually fitted, but they will protect your hearing from all but the very worst insult. The wax ear plugs sold in drug stores are also useful, but not as good as the fitted variet);'. Cotton is completely useless. Most of the above information was supplied by Dr. Linthicum of the Otologic Medical Group. This is the same group that recently received much publicity because of their treatment of astronaut Alan Shepard for inner ear difficulties. It is derived from research projects in several sports and from industry. To date no one has measured the actual hearing loss of motorcycle racers, hut we at Cycle News may do so in the next few weeks if there is evidence of reader interest. ex> o 140 HEARING CONSERVATION CRIT£RIA FOR BROAD BAND NOISE I LEvELS AT WHICH HEAlw.G CONSER-/ATION PROCEDURES AIlE RECOMMENDED. FOR PERSONS HPOSED APPROXIMATELY DAILY FOIl A8DUT 2' YEARS) 130 ~ +-0~ ~~ FOR THE CONSERVO\T10N OF THE HEAR I NG OF SPEECH ....... DAILY EXPOSURE TIME ,Mill. , I "2 1-........... h- l-t SCALE OF. REPRESENTATIVE . SOUNDS .5 I-- 15 .~ ..... t-~ r--. 50 150 ........... f--. 500 80 1l0TE: FOil LEVELS 1008 HIGHER THAll THOSE SHOWIl, , HEAIIING CONSEIIVATION PROCEDUIIES AIlE MANDATO"" 70 I 20 75 I I I 300 600 600 1200 1200 2400 I 75 150 ISO 300 I 2400 4800 4ElOO 10,000 FREOUENCY B~D - CYCLES PER SECOND This chart shows the amount of noise of different frequencies that can be tolerated without significant hearing loss. From the A.M.A. Archives of I ndustrial Health doesn't return completely to normal, ever. Ride enough races, and you will certainly go deaf for all practical purposes. Some people are more susceptible to hearing loss than others. Men are characteristically more susceptible than women. The only way that you can tell how susceptible you are is to measure your hearing before and after· some traumatic experience such as a cycle race. Different people wi!! suffer different temporary losses. The perrnanen t loss will be some small percentage of the temporary loss. One ; seventeen-year-old who was treated by the Otologic Medical Group, one of the country's foremost ear-specialist clinics, lost 20 db of hearing in two years racing on the desert. He started wearing ear plugs at that time, but it was too late. He won't ever hear normally again. How much noise .is damaging? Surprising little. It varies somewhat with the frequency (high frequencies are more damaging than lower one) but essentially any noise ab'llve 85 db is regarded as potentially harmful. Not long ago we measured the noise from some motorcycles at a distance of 50 feet. We measured we.lI over 100 db at 50 feet. For one of the noisier bikes that produced I 10db at50feet, a simple translation ca:n be performed to sbow that the noise level at 3 feet would be about 123 db. (Three feet is aDout the distance from the source of the noise to the rider's ear.) Assuming that the frequency range of the ~ound is between 100 and 1000 cps, it can be seen froq), the accompanying graph that, for conservation of hearing, the daily allowable exposure time is less than !/. minute! .. In the above discussion we are talking about the noise issuing from the cycle being ridden. In a race there is also noise from twenty or thirty other bikes, which of course increases the hazard: If you race or attend races you should be very conscious of possible hearing damage, particularly if you start noticing a ufull" feeling in your -ears or if you have difficulty understandin~ ~·~-lh:-~"·u~~-~_..: ;.( '.;..t.:...A_ l"~ ",_$0 - WHISPER I /0 o ZERO REFERENCE Typical decibel sound uressme levels of familiar domestic and-occupational " ~ ~~ ..., ''" " ~ ~ w d >- U

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