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If God Can Hear Your Most Inner Thoughts… Why are Praise Bands so Loud?
Jan Moore, Elizabeth Lewis, Courtney Smejdir, & Kassandra JohnsonUniversity of Nebraska Kearney
Disclosures
• Jan Moore is a Professor at UNK– Treasurer for Academy of Rehabilitative
Audiology• UNK provided standard faculty and
student travel funding to attend ASHA• No funding or support to conduct the
study• No commercial ties to industry• No conflicts of interest
Research Team
• Jan Moore– Professor, University of Nebraska Kearney
• Elizabeth Lewis• Courtney Smejdir• Kassandra Johnson
– All undergraduate student researchers at the time of the study
– All graduate students at UNK or UNL
Background
• Contemporary or Praise Band services have been an increasingly popular worship style for Protestant faiths over the last 20 years.
• Gone are the days of an acoustic guitar and “Michael Row the Boat Ashore”
• Now we have full-fledged rock bands at worship services
Pertinent Background
• Noise-induced S/N hearing loss has been well documented in– Rock musicians– Orchestral musicians– Band musicians– Just living in NYC
• Silva & Cabral (2011) found priests in Brazilian churches were are risk for hearing loss due to noise levels.
How Churches Respond to Concerns about Sound Levels
• A quick search of the internet yields considerable interest in this topic within the Church community.– Churches consistently tell members the
music level does not exceed OSHA standards• 5 dB rule (time/intensity trade off) in contrast to a
3 dB rule recommended by the NIOSH/CDC• How do they know that?• Do they monitor their members’ hearing overtime?
• Churches blame their members– “If it is too loud for you there is something
wrong with your hearing.”• Churches say “discomfort” does not mean
“harm.”• Churches actually provide hearing
protection
• One church calculated that one service was 13% of the daily OSHA dose– Average dose was 9—11%– Clergy and band was 35% of their dose for 2
services.– Why would you want your service to
contribute anything to someone’s daily dose?
• On a very personal note, I wrote to my church and expressed my concern about the loudness level. – If mothers are trying to cover their infant’s
ears during a service, it is just too loud.– Minister exceeds 90 dB A during the sermon– The wooden pews vibrate during the music
Public Health Issue
• We are interested in investigating the risk of hearing loss in praise band members, clergy, and parishioners (including children) who attend these services.
• NIH’s It’s a Noisy Planet public health initiative suggests any exposure above 85 dB (A) can lead to hearing loss over time.
• Our team looks at exposure to noise in churches as a public health issue
Noisy Planet
CDC—NIOSH
UNK Praise the Lord Project
• Does the noise level at contemporary services suggest there is a risk for permanent S/N hearing loss consistent with noise exposure?
• What are the challenges in measuring noise in the contemporary services
UNK Praise the Lord Project
• Do parishioners, clergy, and other worship staff exhibit a change in hearing (TTS) following these services?
• Is there long-term hearing loss over time?• What is the best method to detect
change?
Method
• The noise levels of 3 Protestant church services were sampled– UNK Christian Student Fellowship (CSF)– First United Methodist Church (FUMC)– Evangelical Free Church (E-Free)
• Services were recorded in the fall during the liturgical season of After Pentecost– Covert recordings– Multiple recordings at each site
Method
• No special services (Easter, Christmas)• Catholic Church services were excluded
due to the standardization of their order of worship
• Contemporary Services typically have– More music – Longer durations of continuous music
• Dosimetry• LENA
Dosimetry
• Quest NoiseProTM Dosimeter
– 2-hour run time• Individual sessions for songs to try to isolate the
contribution of the music to the noise levels measured
– Slow time response– Calibrated– Obtained Min, Max, Average and Dose
information for each service
LENATM
• Language Environmental Analysis– LENA Research Foundation – Boulder, CO
• Lena Pro digital recorder– Application is in language development
• Adult words, child words, turn-taking
– Records time spent in noise and electronic media
– 5-minute intervals for analysis
Dosimetry Results: Full Service Max & Average
Church Duration Maximum dBA Average dBA
CSF 1:08:53 107.2 84.4
46:06 108.1 66.5
Efree 47:06 106:0 78:3
1:16:40 92:4 74.5
58:00 97.0 77.7
49:17 97.4 79.5
FUMC 1:08:09 97.7 82.3
1:08:09 97.7 78.6
1:00:00 96.6 77.7
1:10:00 114.2 73.5
Dosimetry Results: Individual Songs
Church Duration Maximum dBA Average dBA
CSF 6:15 93.1 78.4
Efree 11:13 103.2 91.8
7:54 100.1 67.6
7.26 106.0 75.8
6:59 94.2 78.8
5:37 93.6 79.3
5:12 93.2 72.8
4:18 93.4 80.1
2:07 112.6 94.3
Lena Results
• Lena was utilized in one service to look at noise segments in 5-minute intervals.
• Over half of the service—30 minutes—was music.– Essentially a concert.
Lena Results
• Lena also allows the measurement of the signal in the 5-minute intervals
• The dB levels as recorded by Lena indicated levels exceeded 85 dB A for all segments
• Compression within the microphone of the digital recorder. – Designed for speech not noise
Results
• Our results suggest the loudness levels in contemporary services puts people at risk for N/I S/N hearing loss
• Who is at risk?– Clergy– Band members– Parishioners
• How often do you attend?
Challenges
• How to measure the parts of the services which are loud?
• Duration of the music?• How do we measure change in hearing?
– Which methods?• Conventional audiometry?• OAE?
– How often?• Pre-Post• Yearly
What is the Public Health Message?
• We can’t control much of the noise we are exposed to in our lives
• The environments that we can control should be safe
• Institutions should be committed or at least interested in not contributing to N/I S/N hearing loss.
• Those environments would include schools, churches, & public places
