Hearing loss the top disability among soldiers

Soldiers and Marines caught in roadside bombings and firefights in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming home in epidemic numbers with permanent hearing loss and ringing in their ears, prompting the military to redouble its efforts to protect the troops from noise. Number one on the disabilities in the war on terror, to the Department of Veterans Affairs, is hearing loss and some experts say the true toll would become clear only after decades. It has been found that up to 70,000 of the more than 1.3 million troops who have served in these 2 war zones are collecting disability for a condition called tinnitus, a potentially debilitating ringing in the ears while those on disability for hearing loss reach up to 58,000. This finding is indeed shocking. A startling explanation given is that the Pentagon never truly anticipated the fact that the rebels got to use very fearsome and powerful roadside bombs. Blasts of this kind would lead to violent changes in air pressure that would then break sensitive bones within the ear as well as rupture the eardrum.

As the combats are usually firefights, ambushes and bombings, many of the soldiers, unfortunately, are not spared any time or chance to use their military issued hearing ear defense gears. They don't have the luxury of telling their opponents that they need to put on their ear gears first. On Top of this, some patrolling men would adamantly refuse to wear their ear plugs as they fear it will only dull their sense of hearing and miss the most significant sounds. Some of the men, sadly, did not receive any ear protectors while the others were irresponsible enough to not pack them in prior to heading to the battle zone.

It was recalled by a former serviceman that the noises of war remains with him even after four years after the simultaneous explosion of three roadside bombs right near the district of Baghdad. This man also gave some details to how it might have been hilarious that when the bomb exploded, he did not at all feel any pain of losing his head but then it was the ringing in his ears that he could recall so clearly. His leg, right under his knee, got blown off in the fateful year of 2003. Today his leg has been replaced with a prosthetic, but his ears are still ringing.

According to the military audiology reports, about sixty percent of US personnel exposed to blasts suffer from permanent hearing loss, and 49 percent also suffer from tinnitus. The injury in the person's hearing could range from the milder degrees such as inability to be docile to low pitched sounds or faint whispers, up to harsher ones like a constant loud ringing that destroys the ability to concentrate or total deafness. There is no known cure for tinnitus or hearing loss.

Hearing loss is the leading disability since the time of World War II even up to the Vietnam War. Despite everything that has been learned over the years, the Army troops are suffering hearing damage at about the rate as World War II vets, according to VA figures. But World War II and Iraq cannot easily be compared. What's more is that the fearsome World War II was a special kind of war where it had been waged to a truly far greater level especially when one looks at the kind of artillery barrages, bombing raids and epic tank battles that had all transpired throughout this time.

Given the military hardware utilized today, even the top devices for hearing protection is only partly effective, and only if it's utilized in the right manner. Double sided earplugs amounting to $7.40 a pair were issued to some lucky members of the Marines and its design enables them to be protected from fire and explosions while the other facet protects the ears from noises created by aircrafts and tanks for warfare. Some of the things, sadly, end up virtually useless as the Marines were not given instructions in how to use the earplugs, so some of them would use the wrong sides or even cut them in half on other times. But the manual for instruction of earplugs need to be handed out with them.

Ear protectors that come in high tech earplugs have digital processors that block out damaging sound waves from gunshots and blasts without making people deaf from hearing everyday noises are now being bought and distributed by the Marines and the Navy for their people. Tests have already been ran among some troops specifically with one sided earplugs that cost around eight hundred dollars and fifty cents which are also being used by the Army for every single soldier dispatched to Afghanistan and Iraq war zones.

In addition, the Navy is working with San Diego based company to develop a hearing pill that would protect the troops' ears. Back in the year 2003, an early study was accomplished and this showed a 25 to 27 percent reduction in hearing loss that was undeviating. But it is for the first time, seen in American warfare that along the front line are the hearing specialists or hearing trained medics who are no longer station at just the field hospitals and other remote clinics.

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