Hearing Loss

Deafness is a condition wherein the ability to detect certain frequencies of sound is completely or partially impaired. When applied to humans, the term hearing impaired is rejected by the deaf culture movement, where the terms deaf and hard-of-hearing are preferred. [source: Wikipedia]

Deafness can be caused by several factors such as age, long term exposure to environmental noise, genetic, disease or illness, medication, exposure to ototoxic chemicals, and physical trauma.

Our hearing ability decreases with age which is referred to as "Presbycusis", the progressive loss of ability to hear high frequencies with increasing age.

It has been found that people who lives near airports or motorways are exposed to levels of noise typically in the 65 to 75 dB(A) range. If these people spends significant amounts of time outdoors or with their windows open, these type of exposure overtime will result in degrade hearing. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has set noise standards to protect people from these adverse health risks.

Hearing loss can apparently be inhereted.If a family has a dominant gene for deafness it will persist across generations because it will manifest itself in the offspring even if it is inherited from only one parent. So if your mum and dad has hearing impairments it is very likely to be passed on to you or your siblings which means that you and your siblings are more susceptible to hearing loss.

Diseases or illnesses can cause hearing loss such as measle, meningitis, mumps, Aids, HIV, premature birth as well as some sexually transmitted disease such as chlamydia.

It has been found that some medication can cause irreversible to our hear. Medications such as gentamicin and platinum based chemotherapeutics such as cisplatin. Others includes diuretics, aspirin and NSAIDs (non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) and macrolide antibiotics.

Blunt trauma to the ear or the barin can cause hearing impairments. People who sustain head injury are vulnerable to hearing loss or tinnitus, either temporary or permanent. Exposure to very loud noise (90 dB or more, such as jet engines at close range) can aso cause progressive hearing loss.

Sometimes hearing and vision impairments comes hand in hand. According to the Deaf Society NSW, it is rare that an individual with deafblindness would be completely blind and completely deaf. These individuals have specific communication, learning, and mobility challenges due to their dual sensory loss. The Deaf Society supports people who are Deafblind. People who are Deafblind can access Deaf Society services such as support an individual’s tasks of daily living including budgeting, domestic duties, health and well being to enable the person to live independently, and access the community. In terms of flying; Qantas does cater for hearing impaired passengers who have special needs. In a situation where a hearing impaired passenger is flying from Sydney to a specific destination and requires travel escorts in Sydney or Melbourne escorts. They can be escorted by a carer and this carer is eligible for discounted fares. Here's a link to the Qantas site to read more about it