Sound science
2 minute read | Feb 2025
how noise can become toxic
When in the party, inside your ear, tiny micro-hair cells (stereocilia) convert sound energy into electrical signals for your brain to process. This is what facilitates all the good times that we associate with the dance floor. However, overdoing the noise is like overdoing anything and result in toxicity and damage.
To understand how you can overdose on noise, it’s helpful to think of these tiny hair cells like blades of grass, with sound energy being like people walking across a field.
If one person (a small amount of sound) walks over the grass, it might flatten slightly but will recover after some time. Similarly, after a loud event, you might notice temporary hearing loss or ringing that resolves within 48 hours.
But if lots of people (more sound energy) trample the grass repeatedly, some blades won’t recover, leading to permanent damage. Once these micro-hair cells are damaged, they can’t grow back—it’s irreversible.
Noise damage builds up like a dose—the louder the sound or the more often you're exposed, the higher the risk of permanent issues. And it’s not just about how often; it’s the total sound energy you’re exposed to that matters.
Back to the grass example: the total damage is the same whether 100 people walk over the field in one night or spread out over a year. This is called the equal-energy principle. Be aware that a single loud sound (like a gunshot) over a certain loudness can also cause hearing damage.
Toxicity causes damage in the following ways Oxidative Stress and Free Radical Formation, excitotoxicity and inflammation, disruption of inner ear blood flow and direct damage to the hair cells themselves.
How loudness works
In a venue, sound levels are often over 90 dB, sometimes even reaching 100 dB or more. It's important to understand how loud these levels really are and how they affect your hearing. Decibels (dB) are the unit used to measure sound intensity, and the scale is logarithmic, meaning that for every 10 dB increase, the sound intensity is 10 times greater. For example:
100 dB is 10 times more intense than 90 dB.
110 dB is 100 times more intense than 90 dB. (A 20 dB increase = 10 dB x 10 dB)
Higher dB levels exert more pressure on your ears, increasing the risk of damage.
But here's the the interesting bit: our ears don't perceive sound like this.
A 10 dB increase in sound intensity (10 times more intense) sounds only about twice as loud. Even though the intensity (and risk for damage) has increased 10 times, our perception of loudness is less dramatic.
This is crucial to understand when checking venue loudness and choosing earplugs, as the difference between a -10 dB earplug and a -20 dB earplug is significant: the latter reduces sound energy by 10 times, making it about half as loud to your ears. This could significantly impact your experience if you are over-attenuating volume with your earplugs. Using your noise dose as a guide can help you find the right balance between volume-control and hearing the music.
Read more about the global recommendations for loudness levels in loud music venues here.
Find our more about dietary intake and noise-damage here.
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