One of the concerns frequently asked online is do bone conduction headphones damage your hearing? This is most likely due to the technology being used and concerns that are frequently brought up about standard headphones when they are turned up far too loud when over your ears.
Do Bone Conduction Headphones Damage Your Hearing? Bone conduction headphones entirely bypass the eardrum, since they skip the eardrum they do not present a risk to that part of the ear, unlike standard headphones. This means the hearing concerns of standard headphones do not apply to bone conduction headphones.
Let's jump into the possibilities of hearing issues when related to bone conduction headphones. While they are almost impossible it is never a bad thing to understand the possibilities to make sure you are always properly taking care of your ears as you only get one set.
Any sound which comes into your cochlea from stimulus always has the possibility to cause hearing damage, but this is far overblown in almost every post I read. Since the biggest issue to your hearing being damaged is loud sound into your eardrums, bone conduction is one of the safest ways to hear do to not utilizing your eardrums.
The largest portion of ear damage comes in on the eardrums when the standard headphones sit over your ear and push and pull air against your eardrums.
Most hearing loss is caused by long, continuous noise which is typical in a work environment featuring consistent noises like aircraft engines, jackhammers or similar loud and consistent noises.
MP3 player earphones are not capable of producing levels great enough to cause an eardrum perforation, so users would not be at risk of eardrum damage from any type of earphone. Rather, listeners are at risk of cochlear damage from overuse of any type of earphone. The fact that these earphones use bone-conduction transducers does not inherently make them any safer than any other earphone, as bone-conducted sound is transduced by the cochlea similarly to air-conducted sound.
Cory Portnuff - AuD
Based on what the doctor states what you really want to manage is listening above 120db consistently and you will have no chance of issues. Thankfully for most everyone portable devices like bone conduction headphones don't typically have the ability to reach this level of sound.
Always remember you only have a single set of eardrums that you get for life and being safe around your hearing should always be something you keep in your mind. Hopefully, we have helped you with your concerns today and gave you some reasons why you should look into bone conduction more, we offer our personal reviews over here.
Looking for the Best Bone Conduction Headphones, check out our Buyers Guide over here where we review what you need to know about your headphones prior to making your buying decision.
