Hearing Loss on the Rise in US Teenagers

JAMA published research showing a rise in hearing loss among US teenagers from 15% between 1988-1994 (2928 teens) to 20% from 2005-2006 (1771 teens). The study was a cross-sectional analyses of US representative demographic and audiometric data.

No one quite knows exactly why this has happened... but my guess is the increasing prevalence of portable music players where loud music can cause hearing damage.

Read a story on this in Reuters here.

Reference:
Change in Prevalence of Hearing Loss in US Adolescents. JAMA. 2010;304(7):772-778. doi:10.1001/jama.2010.1124