Life can get noisy, can’t it? As a matter of fact, life can get so noisy it’s actually bad for your health. So how do you know which sounds are too loud? According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), prolonged exposure to noise louder than 85 decibels (dB) can cause permanent hearing loss and tinnitus.

In 2014, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) conducted a pilot study to determine which smart phone apps were the most reliable. The results were published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Of the 130 iOS and 62 Android apps they examined, NIOSH found the following iOS apps to be the most reliable.

For iPhone and iPad. Cost $1.99

Includes a visible alert when an environment can cause hearing damage, safety screening of appliances, power tools and sound-emitting children’s toys, and calibration for home theaters and speakers.

For iPhone, iPad. Cost $3.99

This sound meter app is recommended by the Laborers’ Health and Safety Fund of North America. An exposure scale ranks the level of noise from “quiet” and “comfortable” as green displays to “extremely noisy” and “intolerable” as red displays.

For iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch. Cost $0.99

Choose between two modes, Sound Level Meter or Noise at Work, each with three different views. The spectrum view displays a bar graph of the sound level, the history view displays a one minute time log of the sound measurement, and parameter offers a view of all of the statistics of the current measurement.

For more information, please follow this link to an article: smartphone apps

Content provided by HealthyHearing