Noise and Hearing Protection. Sometimes, as an audiologist, I will hear individuals with hearing loss tell me that they do not feel that they need to wear hearing protection since they already have a hearing loss. It is true that once the nerve endings in the inner ear are damaged or destroyed through noise exposure, they cannot be brought back or replaced. More important, though, is the fact that noise will further damage additional nerve endings.
Noise damage is very harmful to the understanding of speech.
Such exposure diminishes the person's ability to understand what is being said. Noise can be very dangerous to the hearing of all individuals, whether or not they have a hearing loss. The best human hearing has a range from 20 Hz, which would be a very low, deep sound, up to 20,000 Hz, which is a very high, squeaky sound. When we speak, the human voice ranges from about 300 - 4000 Hz. Women's and children's voices are usually higher in frequency.