Lawsuits against 3M are flooding federal courts as military veterans accuse the company of selling defective earplugs that failed to prevent hearing loss during training or combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.

As of December 16, 2019, there were 139,693 people who had registered their existing or future claims.

They allege that 3M’s dual-ended Combat Arms earplugs were defective because they could slip out. This caused plaintiffs to suffer hearing loss and/or tinnitus (ringing in the ears) when they were exposed to loud noises.

Furthermore, the lawsuits claim the earplugs were too short to fully protect users from loud noises.

If you're a vet and have experienced this issue you may want to find the source of this lawsuit and jump in.

SOURCE: https://dailyhornet.com/2020/nearly-140000-veterans-claim-hearing-loss-from-3m-earplugs/

I found this article and it offers some hope to people like me who don’t understand speech very well.

It was in NewsOK.com. http://newsok.com/new-treatments-help-seniors-live-longer/article/5357438

Here is the part about the new technology.

For many seniors, hearing loss is a serious health difficulty. The cochlear nucleus hybrid implant system is considered a groundbreaking advancement that will change the way hearing loss is treated by expanding the scope of hearing technology, said Sandra Over, an Integris audiologist.

The cochlear hybrid is a combination of the cochlear implant and a hearing aid.

“It will enable us to help hearing-impaired individuals who are struggling significantly even with the best of hearing instruments and who previously didn’t qualify for a cochlear implant,” Over said.

An entire population of patients “currently lives their day-to-day lives struggling to hear with and without hearing aids. Many of those patients get some benefit from low-frequency amplification, but struggle to hear sounds of nature, understand their grandchildren, and simply avoid noisy environments where speech can be difficult to understand,” Over said.

“This new system gives these patients a new and highly effective treatment option.”

The nucleus hybrid system includes the nucleus hybrid L24 implant and the cochlear nucleus 6 sound processor with cochlear hybrid hearing.

“This system is designed to effectively restore access to high frequencies, resulting in a speech-understanding improvement two times greater than with a hearing aid alone,” Over said.

Only cochlear can provide the option to stimulate low-frequency hearing and simultaneously restore access to the high frequencies through electric stimulation.

“This is because hybrid hearing is built into every cochlear nucleus 6 sound processor and can be accessed by attaching the hybrid-hearing-acoustic component,” Over said

Yes. There is research going on about how to cure hearing loss.The Stanford School of Medicine has the Stanford Initiative To Cure Hearing Loss.
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In a blog post on their site on May 30, 2012, they discuss the Initiative.  What I found interesting was a list of some of the research into curing and reversing hearing loss.  Click on the names to see the research from the Cheng, Heller and Ricci labs. The articles are pretty technical but thank God there is research going on.
I’ve always been amazed that research has created so much success helping people with visual problems ranging from poor vision to cataracts.  There are all kinds of procedures and operations available.

For hearing problems, however,  we have hearing aids and cochlear implants and not much more. In a lot of cases, hearing aids help but can be painful to use. To me, there is nothing more frustrating than being with people and not understanding them. Hearing aids help me in quiet situations, but in a noisy environment, like a restaurant, they’re basically worthless.  They have noise reduction built in but it just isn’t effective.  After all, if you can’t hear a certain frequency, what good does throwing that frequency at you amplified?  It’s like shining a brighter and brighter light at a person who is completely blind.  They can’t see it and we can’t hear it.
What we need is a way to stimulate the traumatized cells in the cochlea so they can function normally again. That research is under way at Stanford along with research on gene therapy, stem cell therapy and molecular therapy to cure hearing loss.
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I hope they find the cure and make life much better for so many people.

Research at the UW Medical Center translates to improving care options for patients. This University of Washington program shows what is going on in Dr. Clifford Hume,s  lab, where researchers are exploring a biological approach to hearing restoration by stimulating regeneration of hair cells in the inner ear.
This is an interesting but long video.  If you want some insight into the research to cure nerve damage hearing loss, you must watch this.

The following is from the FAQ section of a British Company called All Ear Plugs.

​Sensitivity to noise is unique to the individual. However, there is a general rule that can be applied. A sound is considered safe to hear if it is 85dB or less, which is the equivalent of a telephone dial tone. Safe sounds include the whisper of a quiet library, the sound of a normal conversation and the noise of city traffic whilst in your car. However, harmful noises can include a train whistle at 500 feet, the sound of a tube train, a power mower, motorcycle and power saw at 3 feet. Hearing loss may occur with sustained exposure to sounds that are measured between 90-95dB.

It is not only the level of noise, but also the duration of exposure that determines whether it is a threat to your hearing.

There are two determining factors on how noise affects you.

• the level of noise and
• how long you are exposed to it.

According to the ear plugs specialists at All Ear Plugs, for every three decibels over 85dB the time you can be exposed to it without running the risk of temporary or permanent damage is halved. For a sound that is measured at 88dB continuously the permissible exposure time is four hours, but for a measured 91dB noise the time descends down to only two hours of continuous exposure.

If you want a visual of how loudness affects your hearing, look at this great infographic from the All Ear Plugs website. I hope they don’t mind me sharing this with you, but I feel it is critical information. Support them. 

Wegmans Food Markets, out of Rochester, NY, with stores in six states, is beginning to install Induction Hearing Loops in pharmacies at some of their stores

Induction Hearing Loops work with many modern hearing aids to bring clear sound to the hearing aid.

Here’s how hearing loop systems work - a condenser microphone built into a service counter or checkout lane captures the sound of an employee speaking. A “smart” amplifier removes background noise and sends the clarified sound to an induction loop, which converts it into a wireless electromagnetic field. The T-coil in a hearing aid or cochlear implant acts like an antenna, picking up the signal and delivering the sound directly from the source to the ear.

Congratulation, Wegmans, for helping hearing challenged people. 

An article on Futurity.org discusses  a study at the University of Illinois that researched brain structure changes resulting from Hearing Loss and Tinnitus. Surprisingly, the sensory deprivation from Hearing Loss caused greater brain structure changes than Tinnitus, which can range from mildly annoying to debilitating.

Evidently Hearing Loss WITH Tinnitus resulted in brain function changes but less brain structure changes.

“However, in the case of tinnitus, surprisingly, there were few changes to brain structure despite changes to function, suggesting that when sensory deprivation is accompanied by self-generated noise, it may be better at preserving neural tissue.”
See the full article at http://www.futurity.org/health-medicine/hearing-loss-may-change-brain-structure/

I’ve mentioned in a previous post that you can buy an Apple iPad for a fraction of the cost of a set of hearing aids.  The hearing aids will amplify sound while the iPad has a computer, an accelerometer, a GPS system, video, audio, touch screen and so much more – all for a lot less than one single hearing aid. It’s the high cost of hearing aids that keep many hearing challenged people from wearing them and that’s a shame.

Www.embracehearing.com published an article a few days ago the addressed the ridiculously high cost of hearing aids. Quoting their article…

A modern, RIC BTE hearing aid weighs in at about 2 grams. It may wholesale for $500, and resale for $2,500. On a per-ounce basis, that’s a staggering $7,200 at wholesale, and $36,000 at resale. For comparison, gold is currently trading around $1,600 an ounce.

In all fairness, this approach penalizes manufacturers for making technological strides to reduce the weight of hearing aids, and increase comfort and satisfaction.

Nevertheless, the conclusion holds: on a per-ounce basis, hearing aids cost twenty times their weight in gold.   

It actually took us a while to identify any substance, man made or otherwise, with a higher price-to-weight ratio than modern hearing aids. We think contact lenses come close, but they were too light to register on our scale. But we did identify two clear winners. Plutonium is one. The other is a diamond.

Imagine – the wholesale cost may be $500 on a $2500 hearing aid.   Sure, you get a hearing exam but they don’t have to take molds of your ear anymore because almost all hearing aids are behind the ear.  Just program the aid, find the right fitting ear tip, cut the tube to the right length, and they earn a very nice profit and nice commissions.

Have you ever tried to buy a hearing aid that you can program on your own computer?  Try searching for one. Good luck. The fact is that the hearing aid industry is monopolized by companies that got legislation passed that protects their profits.

To be fair, though, it is those profits that keep the hearing aid companies developing better and better aids. But how fair is it that you have to spend upwards of $5,000 to $8,000 for a really good set of hearing aids when you can fix your vision with a pair of the best glasses that costs a couple of hundred dollars?  And the glasses probably fix the vision problem a lot better than the hearing aids will fix the hearing problem.

I’m sure that many of you rely on TV closed captioning to enjoy your favorite shows. I certainly do.  But, how annoying is it when half of what is being said doesn’t show up in the closed captioning. I hear well enough to know that the actors are talking and I can see their lips moving, but can’t understand what they’re saying. When the closed captioning is not synced, or when lines don’t show up, it can ruin the show.

I was watching Homeland, on Showtime, recently. I think they put a beginner on that show to do the CC. The people who do the CC obviously get the script from the production company because the script is sometimes ahead of what is being said. That’s actually nice. So the question is – why would a company like Media Access Group who does the CC for Homeland, put a novice on a major show like that.  All I can say is that IT’S ANNOYING.  If you’re going to do it, do it right.