subject: Can Soldiers' Hearing Be Saved? [print this page] It is shocking how so many members of troops are coming home in epidemic numbers with permanent hearing loss and drumming in their ears today, specifically the Marines and soldiers caught in roadside bombings and firefights in Iraq and Afghanistan and this is mainly why the military feel the value of intensifying their efforts in protecting the hearing of their people.
Damage to a person's hearing comes in number 1 among the war on terror disabilities to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and it was also revealed by the authorities that it might entail decades before this becomes understandable.
Fifty eight thousand or more on disability for hearing loss while nearly seventy thousand of the more than 1.3 million soldiers released to the two war zones are collecting disability for tinnitus, a potentially debilitating ringing in the ears of an individual.
Many people are shocked with the numbers. A startling explanation given is that the Pentagon never truly anticipated the fact that the rebels got to use very fearsome and powerful roadside bombs.
A person's ear drum would get ruptured while the bones in the ear would break as the air pressure is changed with such strong blasts.
With most of the fights being in firefights, ambushes and bombings, soldiers are not spared any time or chance to use their military issued hearing guards.
Soldiers in battle do not have the liberty to ask their opponents to stop so that they can first put on their ear protection devices.
Moreover, many of these great servicemen on watch repudiate the use of such earplugs for fear of dulling their sense of hearing inevitably missing important sounds that truly matter in their duties and mission.
Others were not given earplugs or did not take them along when they were sent into the war zone.
It was shared by this former serviceman that the raging war noises remain with him after more than 4 years after the synchronized explosion of 3 terrorizing roadside bombs right near the area of Baghdad.
He shares that it was quite absurd that he did not feel his leg blasted out at all but he could clearly recall how hard his ears rung.
He recalls how his leg was blown off back in 2003, right below his knee. He may already have a new leg, a prosthetic one, but until today, the awful ringing in his ears does not fade away.
As per the military audiology reports, forty nine percent of US personnel exposed to blasts suffer from tinnitus and sixty percent of them would suffer from hearing loss on a permanent degree.
The injury in the person's hearing could range from the milder degrees such as inability to be docile to low pitched sounds or faint whispers, up to harsher ones like a constant loud ringing that destroys the ability to concentrate or total deafness.
The loss of hearing which is also called tinnitus does not have one solution.
The fact is that so many people, since the time of World War II and well through the war in Vietnam, suffer from the chef injury, which is hearing loss.
Despite everything that has been learned over the years, the Army troops are suffering hearing damage at about the rate as World War II vets, according to VA figures.
But World War II and Iraq cannot easily be compared. With the truly vast artillery barrages, epic tank battles and the terrorizing bombing raids that all transpired during the second world war, it can be said that this war was really different and was waged to an extremely far greater scope.
Given today's fearsome weaponry, even the best hearing protection is only partly effective, and only if it's properly used. Some Marines were issued a $7.40 pair of double sided earplugs, with one side designed to protect from weapons fire and explosions, the other from aircraft and tank noise.
But the Marines were not given instructions in how to use the earplugs, and some cut them in half, while others used the wrong sides, making the devices virtually useless. But nowadays, instructions need to be handed out along with the earplugs.
People under both the Navy and the Marines receive modern ear plugs, which contain digital processors that block out disparaging sound waves from gunshots and explosions and still allow users to hear daily noises and injurious sounds and this is just a superb idea.
Testing has begun testing with some troops specifically in this $8.50 worth one sided earplugs which is being used by the Army for every single soldier dispatched to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Besides, the Navy today is working handinhand with this firm from San Diego that is tasked to develop one powerful medicine which can be the one thing that will protect the ears of the troops.
There showed a 25 to 27 percent reduction in permanent hearing loss among 566 who were recruited for the study back in the year 2003.
But now for the first time in American warfare and in the past three years, we see the front line having hearing specialists or hearing trained medics and no longer staying at the remote hospitals in the fields.
