Gasoline powered lawn mowers and blowers don’t just create a lot of air pollution. They can be dangerously loud too! The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association puts lawnmowers in the ‘Extremely Loud’ category. They produce roughly 90 decibels, which is enough noise to cause ringing in the ears and long term hearing loss. 90 dB is the same amount of noise that shop tools, truck traffic, and subway cars produce.
If you are mowing with a gasoline powered lawnmower, please use earplugs! Sounds louder than 80 decibels are considered potentially dangerous. Both the amount of noise and the length of time of exposure determine the amount of damage. Hair cells of the inner ear and the hearing nerve can be damaged by an intense brief impulse, like an explosion, or by continuous and/or repeated exposure to noise.
If you think you have “gotten used to” the noise you are routinely exposed to, then most likely you have already suffered damage and have acquired a permanent hearing loss. Don’t be fooled by thinking your ears are “tough” or that you have the ability to “tune it out”! Noise induced hearing loss is usually gradual and painless, but, unfortunately, permanent. Once destroyed, the hearing nerve and its sensory nerve cells do not regenerate!
Don’t believe them? Here’s more information from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a US government agency.
Push reel mowers are so quiet that you can mow early in the morning and not wake up your neighbors. You can listen to an MP3 player or carry on a conversation while mowing. You don’t realize how annoying the loud noise of a gasoline mower really is until you use a reel mower and mow without it!
It’s all about the way reel mowers cut…