We love to listen to our Ipods and mp3 players....aah! how i love the metal and the bass blowing into my ears! the superior transmission quality of the current models of earbuds an earphones enhances the effect of the noise to the limit of bliss!!

but i "hear" there is a small problem in this case. the human population is slowly gong deaf...yah u "heard" me right....according to a recent survey in the United States, 28 million people in the US suffer from hearing problems with 80% of them irreversibly affected.

According to the audiology researchers, the human ear can tolerate upto 80 decibels of sound for a long time without any issues. the problem is with higher intensity sounds. mp3 players produce around 120db sound which can wreak havoc in our ear.

our ear basically consists of a fluid in the cochlea, which absorbs the sound waves thus reducing their intensity a little bit. these sound waves pass through the fluid and generate motion in the ciliary hair in the ear, which gives rise to the "sensation" of sound.

High intensity sound waves rupture the cornea and also rip out the ciliary hair. most of these damage is irreparable. we dont realise the damage since it is painless and gradual, but it occurs...by god, it does!!

the good part is that the society is now slowly discovering the harmful effects of blasting sound INTO the ears. bad part is we youngsters are not bothered by it. music is our best companion in trains, at work, walking down the street or while lying down in bed. so whats the solution??

one way around the problem is to listen to sounds below 80 db. now how do we do that with an mp3 player? rule-of-the-thumb says "you are in the safe limits if your player is at less than 60% of its maximum volume" you can listen to this intensity even for long durations.

researchers are also of the opinion that out-of-the-ear headphones are slightly better than in-ear ones. there r some companies that also sell earphones that completely filter out external sound, so the need of pumping up the volume does not arise. plus, some medications are in the offing that kinda act like a buffer against high sound. (I wonder how?)

So the bottomline is...use your mp3 player responsibly. we hardly look at mp3 players and music as addictions on par with cigarettes and tobacco, but my friend, their effects r analogous....

may ur hearing be as healthy as ever!!!


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Dear Readers,
This article has been written by a fellow contributor, Govindraj, who was, for "technical reasons" unable to post it himself on the blog.


These days, we hear a lot about indoor air pollution and its effect on human health. But what exactly is indoor air pollution? What are the sources of indoor air pollution? Why does it occur in the first place? Well, this article will try to provide some insights on that.

To start with, let me get to pollution in general. Contrary to popular belief, a pollutant is defined as a substance present in excess of its normal concentration in the environment. That means, any substance on this earth has a the potential to be a pollutant, if it is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Air pollution is a serious issue because unlike water and land pollution, physical boundaries are not sufficient to contain it. Pollution, in that sense, is a unifying factor across national and international boundaries! Consider the case in point: rapid industrialization in Germany and France led to Sweden's lakes turning acidic due to acid rain! Now, that is what they mean when they say that the world is getting closer.

Another myth is that CO2 is a pollutant. CO2 is a green house gas and is not a pollutant. CO2 will be called a pollutant if it is present in amounts exceeding 5000ppm and since there are a lot many sinks to this particular gas, there is scant possibility of this gas making it to that high a concentration. Anyway, coming back to the point at hand, we all know what ambient air pollution is. There are standards set by the Central Pollution Control Board [CPCB] which are known as National Ambient Air Quality Standards [NAAQS]. More information can be sought at the website: www.cpcb.nic.in

However, there are no standards prescribed for the indoor environment. Why is this so?

Consider the fact that there are at least a million registered and un-registered architects all over the world and each one has her / his own way of designing buildings. Each one gives different weightage to lighting and ventilation factors. Ergo, it becomes difficult to gauge how much air is going into an indoor environment and how much is leaking to the atmosphere from it. Also, the definition of the indoor environment is such that it becomes difficult to make a standard. An indoor environment is any place / location where one is not exposed to the ambient air directly. That means every place, right from schools to cars to trains and aeroplanes fall in this category. That makes a difficult job, that of specifying standards, impossible.

What then, are the sources of indoor air pollution? There are many, and a partial list can be found here: [The website of the United States Environmental Protection Agency] You will find among the many listed sources a source called Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS). Note the use of the word Environmental. Cigarette smoke has not been referred to directly, because cigarette smoke itself is a part of ETS. ETS is constiituted by cigarette smoke as well as the smoke that the smoker exhales. Overall, ETS is more harmful than cigarette smoke by itself is.

The cigarette burns at a very high temperature when the smoker inhales and the tip of the cigarette can be at as high a temperature as 900 C. Which probably explains why cigarette burns take so long to heal! Nicotine, the habit forming chemical present in tobacco, does not lead to the production of harmful gases / particulate matter. It is the "tar" present in the tobacco which leads to production of carbon monoxide and carcinogens and poly aromatic hydrocarbos like phenanthrene, flouranthene, etc. Carbon monoxide reduces the oxygen carrying capacity of human blood because it forms an irreversible bond with haemoglobin. Particulate matter settles in the lungs, and cigarette smoke has such small particles that they can deposit in the alveoli, which are the places where gas transfer takes place in the lungs i.e. oxygen is swapped for CO2.

The smoke that a smoker exhales has more of these smaller particles than he / she has himself / herself inhaled, because they are too small to get deposited in the smoker's lungs. However, in the time that elapses between a smoker exhaling and a passive smoker inhaling, these condense on other particles and grow sufficiently in size to get deposited in the passive smoker's lungs. Which is what makes passive smoking such a threat to humans! There are of course many other sources of indoor air pollution and I haven't even scratched the surface of this topic. However, I do believe that I will have generated sufficient interest in this topic by this small article for all of you to do some reading on your own. Based on the popularity of this post, I will decide whether to part with some more interesting information! Till then, adieu! :)


Govindraj

Enterprises are slowly awakening to the cause of the planet...not because they are becoming climate conscious, but because these"bloody environmentalists" are bloody "eating into their

First it was Apple that declared that it would go green, after a rather vociferous campaign by GreenPeace and Climate Counts invoking Apple to show some energy sense. Apple's environmental rating as established by Climate Counts is pathetically low.Not that any other companies fare any better.The lowest ones are Amazon, eBay, Wendy's, Burger King while those that are better off and among the top are Unilever, Canon, Nike. The non-profit org, and me too, urge people to buy their stuff from those showing some environmental concern.

GreenPeace also publishes its rankings every year...and I learn, Nokia is better off in its list of Green Electronics, than Apple. And IBM is also one cool dude...Some of the ratings are as follows:
Apple - 2 /100 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IBM - 70
Toshiba - 66
HP - 59
Dell - 41
Canon - 77 !!!
Yahoo - 36
Microsoft - 31
Google - 17 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Google made an ambitious announcement to become Carbon Neutral b the end of 2007)
Coca Cola - 57
Pepsi - 26
Kellogg - 24

The latest entrant in the climate revival group is McDonald's, whose UK concern has committed to making all its vehicles run on organic gas - biofuel containing a mixture of cooking oil it uses everyday and petrol. The move, the company claims, would save 1650 tonnes of carbon every year...cool!

Why single out these cos when there are greenhouse emitters all around? True, there are emitters all around, but who says the cos are being singled out? Greenpeace and other environmental organisations are acting on multiple fronts - nations, companies, communities and individuals. Energy efficiency should be our prime concern too...So keep replace those incandescent tubes with CFLs, switch off unnecessary power, purchase stuff with an energy rating, and exhort others to do their bit for the planet...

That should keep the earth from warming even more because of you!! Remember the adage... "Think globally...ACT locally"