Custom earplugs made from solid silicone make for some of the most convenient and effective hearing protection available. Convenience really counts when you factor in how often people will forego safety equipment because it can be annoying to wear.
Nearly 1 out of every 4 adult Canadians reports having some hearing loss.
Custom Hearing Aids Are Convenient
While the best hearing protection may be the over the ear type headphone style, solid silicone earplugs are rated for 27 dB of hearing protection. When you consider sound is cut in half for every 3 dB that is a huge reduction.
Comfort
ComfortBecause the earplug is made of soft silicone that is made from an impression of your two ears, you can comfortably wear them all day. In fact, you will forget they are in after getting use to them.
Hearing When Wearing Earplugs
With the earplugs in you can still hear well enough to talk to another person. It’s good though to be mindful you have them “in” as you might raise your voice a bit to compensate. Noise hocks are also a good option for someone who would be wearing earplugs for a full day, noise hocks have filters that allow you to hear speech but will block out harmful noises. That said, the flexible silicone means you can simply pop one out in a quick flick and pop it back in just as easily.
We also supply musicians’ earplugs & monitors, swimmers earplugs, and earplugs for sleeping (snoring).
Durability
Silicon is comfortable because it is soft. Typically, most people will get 5 or more years of use based on a 5 day by 8 hours work week. The only time fitting can become loose is if the wearer looses or gains a significant amount of weight, our ears can change the same as any other part of our body.
TIP: You might need hearing protection if the noise level is loud enough that people must raise their voice to talk to someone one metre (3 feet) away.
How to Get Fitted for Custom Ear Plugs
To have a set made for your ears, it takes all of a 10-minute visit to our office. The procedure consists of placing a blocking material just inside the ear canal and then adding a fast hardening compound to the ear canal and area around the ear. From there we ship them to a lab that will make a set of custom molds and from them produce your custom molded earplugs. The whole process takes 7 to 10 days.
To make an appointment simply use the contact form on this page or call (204) 788-1083.
To learn more about the effects of exposure to loud noise, keep reading...
Noise-Induced Hearing Loss
The louder the noise levels are around you, the less time it takes to cause permanent hearing loss. This is because a person’s exposure to noise is measured in dB (decibels) per hour. While one extremely loud noise like a close gun shot (140+ dB) can instantly damage hearing, a lower noise level like a lawn mower at 90 dB may take 6 or more hours to cause permanent damage.
Noise-Induced Hearing Loss is almost always avoidable.
Hearing Loss Is Insidious
Hearing loss due to chronic loud noise exposure usually starts off completely imperceptible. Then slowly over years of overexposure to excessively loud noise the average person begins to experience only mild hearing loss and the first thing to be noticed is that speech is a bit difficult to understand. By the time you notice you have hearing loss it is unfortunately too late.
Work might be too loud when, on the drive home from work if you must increase the volume of the radio above their usual listening volume to hear.
What’s “Loud”
A common guideline of 85 dB for 8 hours a day 5 days a week is considered the maximum safe exposure before hearing loss may develop. The tricky part in evaluating sound levels is to know that dB (decibels) are a logarithmic scale so for a small increase in decibels represents a large increase in intensity. An increase of 3 dB doubles the sound intensity but a 10dB increase is required before a sound is perceived to be twice as loud. Looking at our list of common sound levels, the difference between the lawn mower at 90 dB sounds to be twice as loud as a vacuum cleaner at 80 dB. But as far as our ears and potential damage to them, the lawn mower is actually over 8 times louder.
- Fireworks (140)
- Snowmobile (120)
- Chain saw (110)
- Amplified music (110)
- Heavy Vehicle (90)
- Lawn mower (90)
- Vacuum cleaner (80)
- City traffic (70+)
- Normal conversation (60)
We take hearing protection very seriously because once your hearing is damaged, it can not be repaired. If you have any questions about hearing protection or safe sound levels, please call us at (204) 788-1083.
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