Curiosities: Phones, music players can hurt hearing if too loud

Q. Are people having more hearing problems today because they are spending so much more time with iPods, cell phones and other gadgets?
A. “That depends,” says Daniel Stoppenbach, a clinical associate professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders at UW-Madison. “Noise-induced hearing loss appears to be related to how loud and how long an individual is exposed to noise.”