It is shocking how so many members of troops are coming home in epidemic numbers with permanent hearing loss and drumming in their ears today, specifically the Marines and soldiers caught in roadside bombings and firefights in Iraq and Afghanistan and this is mainly why the military feel the value of intensifying their efforts in protecting the hearing of their people. Experts state that hearing damage is the first disability in the war on terror to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and sadly it might take so many decades before the true repercussions are threshed out. It is determined that those who are on disability for hearing impairment reach up to about 58,000 men while there are nearly 70,000 of the more than 1.3 million troops who have served in the two war zones collecting disability for this potentially debilitating ringing in the ears called tinnitus. Many are surprised by these soaring numbers. Among the biggest explanation is that the Pentagon never foresaw the roadside bombs which the insurgency utilized. Explosions of this sort would certainly shatter the eardrum of any person and break bones in there as the air pressure changes lead to these awful things.
Most soldiers would not be given the chance to put on the military issued ear protection gears as most fights come suddenly and unexpectedly such as ambushes, firefights and bombings. Wait a minute I need let me put my earplugs in first in not something that these soldiers are entitled to. What’s more is that most of these men would rather not put on their earplugs as they would miss out on the sounds that truly matter especially the ones that make a difference between life and death and they also think that this would get in the way of a sharp hearing sense. The other poor soldiers on the other hand weren’t given any earplugs or they forgot to bring them before they were sent off to their mission.
Even if four long years have passed since the simultaneous eruption of three roadside bombs near Baghdad transpired, a former serviceman recalls how the sounds of war persist in his ears. When the bomb went off, he shares how he didn’t feel his leg gone and it was quite absurd that all he could remember vividly was the intense ringing in his ears. The year 2003 was a hard year for him when his leg got blown off under his knee. He discloses the sad fact that up until today, his ears would be ringing even as he already has a nice new prosthetic leg.
As per the military audiology reports, forty nine percent of US personnel exposed to blasts suffer from tinnitus and sixty percent of them would suffer from hearing loss on a permanent degree. Mild hearing damage would comprise of the failure to hear whispers or low pitches, up to severe conditions including total deafness or a steady loud ringing that destroys the ability to focus in an individual, and these are the degrees of the hearing loss. Tinnitus or hearing loss has no known cure.
The Vietnam War and even the time of World War II, hearing damage has been among the leading disability plaguing men. Notwithstanding everything that has been learned over the long years, the Army men are still suffering hearing damage to the extent of what World War II vets are suffering from and this has been revealed by the VA. The war waged in Iraq is not in any comparison to the Second World War. The Second World War was a different kind of war, unleashed to a far greater extent by way of cosmic artillery barrages, terror campaigns and tank battles which were like epics.
Given today’s fearsome weaponry, even the best hearing protection is only partly effective, and only if it’s properly used. The Marines, some of them, were issued a $ 7.40 pair of earplugs with two different sides that also work in two ways, the first side protecting from aircraft and tank noises while the other is designed to protect from weapons fire and explosions. It is just so bad that the Marines were not given apt instructions in how to use the earplugs, so some wound end up cutting the things in half while others would use the wrong sides thus they end up virtually ineffective. But the manual for instruction of earplugs need to be handed out with them.
Earplugs that are very high tech and contain digital processors that block out damaging sound waves from gunshots and explosions without barring them from hearing everyday noises are being bought and distributed by the Marines and the Navy for their men. Each of the men sent off to Iraq and Afghanistan war zones would be endowed with the newly developed one sided earplugs that cost about $ 8.50 by the army and some of them have been tested on this.
Furthermore, there is this firm the Navy is working with, the one based in San Diego which is trying to develop a hearing pill that would protect the troops’ hearing. There was, in the year 2003, a study which was participated by five hundred and sixty six respondents who showed that there was about 25 to 27 percent in decrease of permanent hearing loss. Finally and perhaps for the very first time, the hearing specialists or hearing trained medics have been assigned along the front lines instead of just at field hospitals and this is something good now in American warfare.
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