Comment by coke12 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coke12 | Hacker News Reader

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There was a pretty good HN comment thread about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16723099

From the linked thread:

""" 5. The stupid toilet bowl lid only fell about 8 inches. How could it damage my hearing so badly? I looked up the speed of sound in ceramic, divided by the length of the toilet bowl lid (and divided by 2 since the fundamental vibration is a half wavelength). This predicts 3.5 kHz.

6. This frequency is in the audible range. Using the short dimension of the toilet bowl predicts another (higher) frequency. The toilet bowl lid probably resonated at both those frequencies and their harmonics, putting all the energy into just those specific wavelengths.

7. The toilet bowl lid was not chipped or damaged, so the impact energy went mainly into sound (& internal heat) Maybe like half the impact energy went into sound energy. This lid was concave up like an antenna, near my face when it hit, focusing the energy into my face.

8. The energy travels into your inner ear and the cochlea. The pressure wave is strongest at some distance down the cochlea depending on frequency. Since the toilet bowl lid put all the energy into SPECIFIC FREQUENCIES, it was concentrated onto specific spots in the cochlea.

9. Apparently, this concentration of energy was enough to damage the hairs -- to bend them over like trampled grass -- and I was concerned it could be permanent. My hearing was only slightly better the next morning. It was like everybody was still talking at me through kazoos. """

Fascinating. Be careful around dropping shatter-proof ceramics, I suppose!

Be careful dropping glass bottles into recycling bins too; they pose nearly the same problem - they don't usually shatter and the sound escapes the bin upwards towards you.

Wish I knew this back when I worked in bars, emptying big bins of glass into the outdoor bins. Learnt quickly to look up when I did it.

How would looking up help, though? Unless I’m misunderstanding, the sound would still be coming up straight towards your face/ears.

You look up by bending your neck and your upper back, so when your body is bent forward, looking up will actually move your head (incl your ears) further away from the glass bin.

rather than your ears concentrating/funneling the sound into your ear canal, they would be muffling it since the direct sound wave direction would basically now point into your earlobe

What the other kind commenters said. I just found it worked. I like the analogy of the funnel, pointing it 90 degrees from where it usually is. OH&S wasn't such a thing back in my day (and I'm not even that old), smoking inside was still a thing (banned in that Australian state I was in a long time ago now). I'd use the air conditioners as a break to get some fresh air.

But anyway, a big bin full of glass being emptied was damn loud, but all the concerts I went to wouldn't have helped.

Why isn't this taught to everyone at a young age? I had no idea this could happen and it kind of terrifies me that I can lose my hearing so easily like this without having any clue.

Then go buy the toilet lids that don’t drop with the acceleration of gravity, i. e., “soft close”. Hearing loss or not, I don’t want to hear anyone dropping the toilet lid in the middle of the night.

I don't believe we're talking about the same thing.

The ceramic lid usually goes over the water tank.

(also, you can't control all the toilets in the world)

> (also, you can't control all the toilets in the world)

But imagine if you could!

The culprit was actually a lid on the tank. I've never seen a toilet lid, soft close or not, that doesn't have plastic pieces that prevent full direct contact between the lid and the part below it. They'll deform under pressure, taking the noise level down from unbearable to just loud.

Yeah, I saw that it was the lid after I posted. In fact, I even remember the original post, and at the time thought, "huh, never even thought of that". Welcome to middle age, where a lot of stuff starts to occur to you after the fact. :-|

Even though this isn’t the same thing op is talking about, I also vouch for these. Slow-close toilet lids are amazing. The only problem is when you visit someone else’s house, you have to be conscious when using their toilets else you end up slamming the lid accidentally by reflexively just starting the closing process and finding out they aren’t slow-close lids (BANG!)

This is the first time I've heard of it, and I studied engineering.

I've been surprised at how loud emptying a bucket of aluminum cans into an empty bin can be, the half open lid also reflects the sound back toward you.

I've started tilting the bin at a 45 degree angle, and sliding the bottles in. Seems to help somewhat.

Yeah, and it’s even worse if the bin happens to be in an enclosed space!

Yes, that's the recurrent loudest noise I experience in my life. Not so many times per year obviously, but more than concerts or disco. I should try bending knees to put my ears below the top of the bin.

I recall reading that discussion when it was first posted. There was something I didn't understand at the time, and now that it's brought up again, I want to ask: He mentions there being a fairly short window in which an ENT physician can try to treat the damage, after which no treatments will be possible. I thought all hearing damage was permanent, always, notwithstanding the potential new advances in growing the hairs back. So what exactly could they try, and what difference does time make?

They prescribe systemic steroids. Steroids reduce inflammation and might help recovery a little.

This comes up fairly often on tinnitus fora. Basically there is some "consensus" that a shot of steroids within a very short window, ideally less than 24 hours, can help. Unfortunately, the most common response to damaging one's hearing seems to be to sleep it off for a week and hope it gets better, making it difficult to conduct a study on early responses.

There are studies though, and my conclusion is that it's still mostly inconclusive. Still, if my tinnitus suddenly worsened id be down at the doctor's begging for the steroids.

If I understand correctly some of the most common painkillers are steroids.

I might have seen Ibuprofen mentioned explicitly in relation with hearing loss.

Can anyone confirm or deny if taking Ibuprofen could help if one is stuck without a doctor?

Well, ibuprofen is certainly not a steroid - it is an NSAID (non-steroidal anti inflammatory drug)

Aha, thanks for clearing up : )

Ibuprofen is a NSAID (non steroidal anti-inflammatory drug).

[Edit: okay I was beaten to it :-)]

> If I understand correctly some of the most common painkillers are steroids.

Most over-the-counter painkillers (other than acetaminophen/paracetamol) are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. OTOH, if the reason steroids work against hearing injuries is anti-inflammatory properties, NSAIDs might also work.

(OTOH, regular use of NSAIDs and acetaminophen is known to sometimes cause tinnitus and hearing loss, so, there’s that...)

I had minor hearing loss after a festival, went to an ENT around 72 hours afterwards and was prescribed steroids

After a week my hearing was back to normal, so at least in my case it worked (although I guess there's a question of whether it would have recovered anyway)

Also works as an emergency short term fix for vocal folds as well - some singers if they have inflammation just before a big performance will take some, however, it's not without risk as you can cause additional (potentially irreversible) damage.

I wonder if screaming when you realize you're dropping it would provide some protection.

If your reflexes are that good, sure.

To avoid confusion here, I think we are talking about ceramic cistern lids and not toilet bowl lids as the parent quote actually mentions.

The post starts off mentioning cistern lids, and the title mentions cistern lids, but lapses into toilet bowl lid about the time the parent starts quoting.

"2 I was fixing the mechanism inside the tank of the toilet. The only thing left to do was to put the ceramic lid back on the tank"

So guys, still no excuse for not putting the lid back down when you've finished ;)

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