A Pilot Dashboard System to Track Cumulative Exposure to Sound Levels during Music Instruction: A Technical Report.

Background:  Music-induced hearing loss (MIHL) is a critical public health issue. During music instruction, students and teachers are at risk of developing hearing loss due to exposure to loud and unsafe sound levels that can exceed 100 dBA. Prevention of MIHL in music students must be a desired action of all music educators.
Purpose:  To promote deliberate changes in music instruction and encourage more moderate sound creation and exposure during music education, it is essential to equip the instructors with live dynamic tools to monitor the overall sound intensities during music instruction. Equally important data to convey to the instructors are information regarding the intensity and duration of sounds at specific frequency regions in the music they are generating. Unfortunately, there are no feasible techniques to track cumulative live music exposures at various frequencies nor are there any guidelines for safe music exposure.
Research Design:  We created a visually appealing, user-friendly dashboard prototype system to display the accumulated time and intensity of sound exposure during live classes/rehearsals categorized into three frequency ranges. These visuals can be easily understood at a glance allowing musicians and instructors to make informed decisions about how to play music safely.
Experimental Approach and Results:  The dashboard included a collection of circular dial graphs that displayed in real time the accumulated sound exposure in the instructor's selected frequency range and showed the percentage of the maximum daily sound exposure based on the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Standards (NIOSH, 1998). Although NIOSH standards are not widely applied for music exposure, we propose that these standards can be used to provide initial guidelines to develop critical levels of music exposure. Additionally, the dashboard included a color-coded equalizer that displayed the instantaneous frequency distribution of sounds to indicate if sound levels at specific frequencies were too high even for short-term exposure.
Conclusion:  Less expensive than existing technology and more convenient to use, this dashboard will enable music instructors to make informed decisions on how to best adapt their teaching approaches to protect the hearing health of their students.
Competing Interests: None declared.
(American Academy of Audiology. This article is published by Thieme.)