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Is a sound level of 105 decibels for a few seconds enough to rupture a person's eardrum? (lemm.ee)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In 2022, a Texas family filed a lawsuit against Apple for damaging their son's hearing after an Amber Alert went off while he was wearing Airpods. According to Google, the maximum volume of phone headphones is around 105 decibels. The family are claiming that the son now requires hearing aids after his eardrum ruptured.

Is this plausible?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

It’s plausible since humans probably have different sensitivities for their ears. I live in a city with a train that goes right through the middle of it. It’s got no guard rails and if you’re driving you could reach out and touch it if you wanted. They are required to blast their horns every X meters for safety at max decibels of 110. The closest I’ve been is 3 or 4 meters when it went off. I didn’t get any hearing damage from it though and I haven’t heard of anyone else getting any. That could be related to how close the source of sound was though.

So I would conclude with it’s probably unlikely that was the sole cause as people are around trains all the time. Plus I’m sure plenty of people get amber alerts through there.