In 2022, a Texas family filed a lawsuit against Apple for damaging their son’s hearing after an Amber Alert went off while he was wearing Airpods. According to Google, the maximum volume of phone headphones is around 105 decibels. The family are claiming that the son now requires hearing aids after his eardrum ruptured.
Is this plausible?
Even when they are obstructed by an amplified earbud that is moving sound (and air) at 105db? Edit. I mean, energy has to disperse and can’t exit. In a system like an ear canal sealed by the earbud the ear drum seems the weakest point.
Excellent question!
The energy is typically dispersed by hairs moving, muscles moving, eardrum moving, soft tissue deforming, the hearing system behind the ear drum, your eustachian tube, the movement of the ear pod against your outer ear, and the imperfect seal of the ear pod.
105 dB is probably the max sound pressure level at optimal seal.
Also, it’s easy to verify, as resonance is literally the reason why violins, guitars and pianos have a ringing sound. Whereas regular sounds do not, because your ears don’t have audible resonances (they do have resonances in other frequencies though, just as your eye sockets, lungs and other stuff).
Thanks for the explanation (maybe a little patronizing, but I assume it’s in good faith). I found that 105 db is the average human pain threshold, and that NIOSH suggests a maximum exposure of 4.72 minutes at this db level. Still I don’t know how long is an amber alert signal, but AFAIK they are played at the hardware max volume, bypassing the software limitations of the device, so maybe it was that.
Regarding the energy, mechanical energy tends to follow the path of least resistance, which for the ear is still the tympanic membrane with it’s 0.1 mm thickness. Excluding hairs, which are extremely rare and small in a kid’s outer ear canal, every other structure has a density far more superior, and with density comes inertia which impedes a swift “air to tissue” energy absorption. In a system like this a minimal imperfection in the eardrum tissue (and no tissue is perfectly regular in the human body) is a weak point which can lead to rupture. Also the ear canal is usually a mild funnel, so there’s also an ulterior compression of the air happening inward and towards the eardrum.
As for resonances, I too don’t think that they play a significant role in the case.
Well said!