Hearing Protection Devices

Aug 14

Whether you shoot for enjoyment, work, or sustenance, it involves a lot of something very loud: gunshots. The problem is gunshots are so loud you only need to screw up once to permanently damage your hearing. But gunshots aren’t all equal. Each gun has a different noise profile. So how do we know what we need to do to protect ourselves in various situations with our various guns?

Noise

Any sound over about 85 dB can start to cause permanent damage like hearing loss, tinnitus and other auditory issues. By permanent we mean very, very permanent. Tinnitus, for example, typically only gets worse once you have it.

The rule of thumb is what’s comfortable for you to hear is also safe for you to hear. If you want to estimate what 85 dB sounds like, apparently it’s like a lawnmower 1 meter away. If you have a lawn and a lawnmower you’re welcome to test that for us urbanites in condos. Still, we wouldn’t recommend testing each new gun with the lawnmower method. We’d rather you take our word for it that a .22 caliber round can easily hit 130 dB+. Larger rounds easily clear 160 dB.

Types of hearing protection

We know the stakes are high for our ears, what’s the best equipment we can use? That’s the rabbit hole to go down.

The two main categories of hearing protection devices (HPDs) are passive and active. Each type employs various materials.

Passive ear plugs (we like to call them “foamies” but that also refers to flip flops…) and earmuffs (muffs) work by blocking the noise through their materials and interfering with the passage of noise i.e., your ear canal.

Foam earplugs are incredibly basic, but also effective. They expand in your ear canal giving you a tight seal. They are affordable, disposable, and cheap. The silicone variety can be fit to your ear by selecting the right size and They can be more comfortable than foam earplugs and last longer because they typically don’t exert much pressure on your ear cannel the way expanding foam can. They’re waterproof, but they may not provide as much protection as foam earplugs that make a tighter seal. Some can be custom made to fit the shape of your ears.

Earmuffs on the other hand create a seal around your entire ear and don’t need to fit to your ear canal. They use noise-absorbing materials. They tend to be pretty effective up to a certain point. Sometimes they squeeze your head in an effort to form a tight seal (if your muffs are connected by a metal strap you can try to loosen it up — and if you have a big head buy those with metal straps for this reason).

Active earplugs and muffs, on the other hand, work by providing active noise reduction i.e. electronic noise-cancelling. They work by imparting signals that are 180 degrees out of phase of the noise that, in theory, cancel out the noise. We bet you probably didn’t know that’s how they work.

They come in two types: conventional and level-dependent. Conventionals work by imparting the same level of noise reduction. Level-dependents let you adjust. They usually have a built-in environmental microphone that picks up low level sounds and you can adjust what is picked up to your own comfort level. In plain English, they are good if you want to be able to hear your buddies but still want to block out their noise.

How to tell what to use?

Hearing protection has two typical ratings you’ll see on boxes. Often you’ll see one OR the other:

A Noise Reduction Rating (NRR) tells you how much noise it is capable of suppressing. Ratings can go up to 33 dB. For a loud sound like a gunshot, we would need something with as high an NRR as possible. NRR comes from lab tests under ideal conditions with perfect “seals”. Realistically that means the MOST this ear protection reduces sound is 33dB. Therefore we have to “derate” the NRR by subtracting 7 dB to get a real-world rating. If we wanted to be even more cautious we could further derate the NRR by 25% or 50%. We tend to wear our hearing protection correctly around Range Arts so we stop at subtracting 7. This means an NRR of 33 dB would reduce a 160 dB gunshot (33 db - 7 dB = 26 dB) to 134 dB.

A Single-Number Rating (SNR). In North America, typically, NRR is used whereas in Europe and the UK, SNR is used. SNR is 3-5 decibels higher than NRR but the protection provided is the same. Generally you should reduce that SNR a bit in your head.

Taking the example above of wearing earmuffs and reducing noise to 134 dB: this is still too loud. That’s why we push our clients to double ear protection. We suggest muffs plus passive inner ear protection like foamies. The goal is to keep our gunshot hearing under a certain time limit. If we manage to reduce the decibel levels to 100 dB, for example, we can only shoot for 15 minutes before we start getting hearing damage according to the the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). You can find more info on that here.

But the catch is these calculations are typically for continuous noise like equipment or loud music. Gunshots are not typically continuous noise. Furthermore the sound in front of a gun is louder than behind it or beside it. And materials your range is made from might also dampen sound to some extent. It’s not necessarily true that you’ll be exposed to the loudest part of the gunshot.

How to choose?

When choosing ear protection, the duration and intensity of noise matters quite a bit. When hunting, we’re in an open environment and the sound has more space to be distributed so we might only need active earmuffs. And it will help you hear your comrades.

When indoor shooting, we’re exposed to higher levels of noise for long periods. The noise gets reverberated by the walls so the damage is higher. This means it’s best to go for the double protection approach.

Overall, what really matters to those of us outside a lab is that you feel comfortable with the level of noise you’re hearing. If you’re uncomfortable, stop shooting immediately and look for ways of increasing your protection.

Test your hearing protection and fit by using it in a loud environment. You can also use websites like these to test.

Here are some of our choices but you should be looking for what you feel will protect you best.

AXIL X-Pro Passive Earplug: $29.99

These earbuds are what you call ‘foamies’ but they’re a little more advanced. They have a push button which can change the NRR.

AXIL Trackr Electronic Earmuffs: $84.99

These muffs have directional hearing and a volume control. It has automatic sound-activated compression with a 0.02 seconds reaction time. And you can listen to music with an audio jack!

AXIL TRACKR BLU Bluetooth Earmuffs: $149.99