Years of Rock Music Take Toll on Boomers' Hearing

Remember cranking up the radio while you cruised with your friends in the family station wagon? Remember rocking out at ear splitting concerts, screaming along with the band? Remember spinning the stereo dial until you could feel the bass thumping in your bones? Ah, youth.

Baby boomers are paying the price for all those hours of stereophonic rock. Now they're pumping up the volume not to dance to the music, but just to hear it. Years of high-decibel music have taken a toll on the ears of adults moving into their 60s and even 40s and 50s. One in six boomers has suffered a hearing loss, according to the Better Hearing Institute, a nonprofit education group.

More people ages 45 to 64 report hearing difficulties (10 million) than people older than 65 (9 million), according to AARP studies. With the advent of earphones and earbuds, more people are losing their hearing earlier, says the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

Hearing loss caused by aging generally begins to affect people in their 60s. But noise-induced hearing loss caused by continuous loud noise over an extended time period (rock concerts typically measure 115 decibels) can have an effect much earlier. Some aging rockers report problems hearing the television or following conversations in crowded restaurants as early as their 40s and 50s.

Boomers "are the first of that rock 'n' roll generation," said Sharon Beamer, of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, "the first to really grow up with loud music, personal stereo systems."

"None of us protected our ears at all," said Pat Benatar. Now 54, the well-known rock singer and guitarist campaigns for hearing loss prevention. "I'm still a junkie," she said of rock music. "I still want it so loud." But when her dishwasher is running, she admits, "I can't hear any conversation at all."

With 78 million boomers poised to enter their senior years, hearing aids are undergoing a major overhaul. No longer the big, dorky, pink plastic gizmos your father forever fiddles with, state of the art hearing aids are as tiny as iPod nano earbuds and come in a variety of shades to match your hair color. Unobtrusive yet powerful, manufacturers hope they will appeal to self-conscious, age-phobic, style-conscious boomers. Currently, only 150 people of every 1,000 who suffer diminished hearing wear a hearing aid.