Moves to protect pre-schoolers' hearing

The National Foundation for the Deaf Inc (NFD) has partnered with children’s earmuff supplier, Baby Banz Ltd to protect preschoolers’ hearing.

As part of its nationwide preschool initiative to provide Safe Sound Indicators in early childhood education centres the NFD is also recommending children wear hearing protection during noisy activity at preschool and at home.

Baby Banz is supporting the initiative by donating 20% of the purchase price of sales of the earmuffs to the NFD which will go towards its Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) programme.

Coupled with the Safe Sound Indicator, which is a simple traffic light based noise meter that immediately alerts teachers and children to their noise levels, the earmuffs will promote safe habits around loud noise and provide relief for noise-sensitive children.

NFD CEO, Louise Carroll, says teaching children at an early age about safe sound levels is imperative to slowing the upward trend of the occurrence of noise induced hearing loss in New Zealanders.

“We urgently need to address the incidence of hearing damage in both children and educators through repetitive exposure to excessive noise. We hope to have Safe Sound Indicators in every early childhood centre in New Zealand within three years and would like to think that both parents and educators will embrace the opportunity to purchase Baby Banz’ children specific earmuffs.

“There are a huge range of potentially damaging sounds at early childhood centres – some from unexpected sources. For example, the short, sharp sound of banging a few nails into wood can reach 127dB. We know that brief exposure to sounds over 85dB may cause temporary hearing loss and continued exposure leads to permanent hearing loss,” says Mrs Carroll.

Owners of Baby Banz NZ, Tony and Andrea Little, say they are excited by the potential of the initiative and are delighted to be making a meaningful contribution.

“The earmuffs still allow the sound of a teacher’s voice to be heard, meaning there’s now a way to instantly block dangerous sound to children’s ears while still maintaining voice contact.”

The initiative comes as a result of a NFD survey of 65 kindergartens, playcentres and Kohanga reo last year which revealed that 20% of children had been affected by a high level of noise, demonstrating behaviours from putting their hands over their ears to being so distressed they cried. Over one third of teachers reported buzzing/ringing in the ears from time to time and hearing loss which they believed could be a result of years working in a noisy environment.

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