TABLE 2.
Exposure to Potentially Hazardous Music Levels Among Adolescents Aged 12 to 19 Years, by Source of Music: The Netherlands, 2007
| Music Through Earphones |
||||
| All Sources (N = 1512), No. (%) | Portable Music Players,a No. (%) | Nonportable Music Players,b No. (%) | Discotheques and Pop Concerts,c No. (%) | |
| Equivalent sound level for 56 h/wk, dBA | ||||
| ≥ 80 | 823 (54.4) | 487 (32.2) | 136 (9.0) | 584 (40.1) |
| 80–84.99 | 253 (16.7) | 127 (8.4) | 52 (3.4) | 359 (24.7) |
| 85–89.99 | 260 (17.2) | 115 (7.6) | 21 (1.4) | 166 (11.4) |
| 90–99.99 | 217 (14.4) | 162 (10.7) | 55 (3.7) | 59 (4.0) |
| ≥ 100 | 93 (6.2) | 83 (5.5) | 8 (0.5) | 0 (0.0) |
Note. dBA = decibels. Current EU safety standards specify that music volume levels of at least 80 dBA for 40 hours per week are potentially damaging. However, a report of the EU's Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks asserts that listening to a sound level of more than 89 dBA for 1 hour per day (i.e., 7 hours per week) is potentially damaging. The noise exposure of listening to 89 dBA for 7 hours per week is equal to that of listening to 80 dBA for 56 hours per week. Thus, we used a loosened minimum safety standard of 80 dBA for 56 hours per week, to account for weekend listening.
MP3 players; the sample size was n = 1510 because no weekly dose could be calculated for 2 participants because of missing data on exposure time.
Home stereos; the sample size was n = 1505 because no weekly dose could be calculated for 7 participants because of missing data on exposure time.
The sample size was n = 1457 because no weekly dose could be calculated for 55 participants because of missing data on exposure time.