After watching the fake Britain programme recently I decided to put pen to paper and write up something for my clients. For a number of years now, well since 2011, I have made it a bit of a quest to educate people about the perils of using personal music players and headphones for periods in excess of an hour a day at a reasonable volume.
Everywhere you go; everywhere you look these days there are masses of people walking around with headphones in. Now the trend is to use Bluetooth headphones and naturally, Apple Air Pods are the most sought after brand. This is where the Fake Britain programme comes in. The authentic ‘air pods’ cost around £160 and as a result counterfeit versions are now flooding the market. The show demonstrated and compared the genuine against cheaper versions which were priced at £42, £19.99 and £15.99. Aesthetically speaking they looked pretty similar; however, some earpieces were slightly larger and therefore uncomfortable to wear. The most worrying finding during these comparisons was that when the cheaper brands were tested for sound quality, there were significant sound defects and inconsistencies which are even more detrimental to peoples hearing than the authentic air pods.
So what I am suggesting is if you want to keep your hearing and avoid wearing hearing aids or a premature need for hearing aids, don’t listen to music or play computer games with headphones or earphones. If you want, or need to use earphones, only use them at a reasonably low volume, for up to an hour per day, and buy the best quality, authentic products in order to preserve your hearing for the future.