Smoking

[mildmanneredjanitor]

I never realised that mobiles cause interferance to users of hearing aids? Is this a widespread problem? I guess that if my TV, PC speakers car stereo pick up the periodic 'clicking' form my mobile as it handshakes with transmitters, s'pose that is the same that hearing aid users suffer??

This is the first time I've heard of it being a problem! are the HOH community trying to do anything about it, make the public aware? Legislate against the phone manufacturers making 'noisey' phones???

Worked with a guy whose boyfriend was deaf, loved his mobile! text messages transformed his life! For the first time he could communicate freely with anyone (even my parents have mobiles! )

Still on the same subject, my wife works at a special needs school, and everyone signs (using Makaton), assemblies, plays singing etc. they all sign along which is great! It's a shame that mainstream schools don't try to teach a little...

It's quite strange how my wife starting gesticulating a lot more at home...

 

[securespark]

I was born with it too. My mother can remember the nurse going behind me and ringing a bell, and I still looked at my mum, not the bell.

In contrast today, my 14m old son had a hearing test where they brought a laptop, put a probe in his ear, and hit a key. The pc sent a signal down the ear and measured what came back. This told them he had A1 hearing. Amazing!!

But you can get what is known as percussion deafness, caused by eg power tools etc even rock concerts and personal stereos can do the same.

 

[AdamW]

As a musician, I took to wearing ear plugs back during practices. Before I wore them I would come out of band practices with my ears ringing for hours afterwards. Wearing earplugs not only helped with stopping me from going deaf, but also meant I could pick out the bass frequencies (me being a bass player) over the high frequencies of the drums more easily.

Apparently many young rock musicians have the hearing of a 70 year old. The same applies to the idiots you see using pneumatic drills without earguards on roadworks.

My old band's drummer (who is playing at Glastonbury this year ) reckons he has permanently damaged his hearing. Yet he STILL doesn't wear ear plugs. Anyone who has ever heard the volume of a drumkit in an enclosed space will be shaking their heads now! Anyway, I suppose that is the definition of "percussion deafness".

 

[securespark]

Yes, it's ridiculous. People who know they have suffered because of something they have failed to do, but still refuse to help themselves!!

Like builders who go in lofts all their working lives without masks (I'll only be up there 2 ticks), then wonder why at the age of 59 they are dying of emphysema......Unfortunately, I know one.

 

[masona]

I never realised that mobiles cause interferance to users of hearing aids?

Yes, it is a big problem. I can't even go near a microwave oven when switched on, the buzzing noise is unbelieveable and even when I travelled on trains, I always know when the train is coming ! The buzzing noise start 1 minute before arriving to the station ! I used to wind people up telling I can hear the train coming, I never let on how I've been told it all to do with mircowave sound link that's causing the buzzing noise and this is when the lip-reading start to overcome it.

 

[kendor]

the problem with noise pollution and loss of hearing is that it can be a cumulative effect, even sound that feels comfortable when listening could be contributing to damage over time.

The bit about hearing aids picking up the signals from mobiles etc is a problem that any equipment that uses amplification will one way or another be suseptible to transmissions over the airways(why you need to turn the mobiles off when in hospitals, flying etc), even our bodies pick up electro magnetic waves from nearby electrical equipment we just don't then amplify it but if you touch a probe of an oscilloscope you will see a small signal and surprise surprise it will be around 50HZ

 

[phil_ballard]

Hey AdamW, nice to hear from another bass player!

Though most of the drummers of my experience seem to suffer more from percussion daftness ......

 

[mildmanneredjanitor]

if you touch a probe of an oscilloscope you will see a small signal and surprise surprise it will be around 50HZ

What you get up to in your own time is up to you!!!

It's funny that you mention hospitals, cos I was going to say about how you have to switch off your telephone when in a hospital yet - my local hospital roof looks considerably like Goonhilly with all the aerials and dishes!!!

 

[AdamW]

You could say that about aeroplanes though: take your pick of airliner, it will have a radar in the front (in the radome, funnily enough ) of considerable power compared to any mobile phone.

However this radar, like with your hospital's Cold War-style telecommunications rigs on the roof, is carefully installed to make sure that it isn't causing problems with any of the equipment inside.

I would have thought that it is quite unlikely your phone will cause any real problems. But would you want to be the one person in 10,000 who dies because a mobile phone is interfering with a piece of equipment?

I fly on business quite regularly and many people refuse to turn their phone off until the very last minute when the cabin crew have to nag them. Seriously. No-one is that important that it can't wait a couple of hours! If you are, you can justify the expense of using the onboard phone! Are they hoping to save the universe or something?! But at least they turn their's off when asked. Several times when I have been flying cattle-class in *****-jet I have heard "text message" beeps going off seconds before touchdown, always seems to belong to the the same teenage girl in a tracksuit... does she never age?!

 

[Scoby_Beasley]

Mr Beasley! haven't seen you around in a while! been to the caribean??!??

They took my computer and window away from me at the sanitarium and made me join the real world of running round like a blue assed fly and getting no-where.
We shall return.
Insanity will prevail.

(Wheres me tab papers gone ????)[/i]

 

[Scoby_Beasley]

The other thing people often forget is that whilst smokers may contribute all that Baccy Tax, they don't fail to get their money back when it comes to cancer treatment. If smoking was banned, then (eventually) lung cancer, emphasema, strokes, infertility, impotence, halitosis, many other cancers, asthma, miscarriages, premature babies and all these other conditions would decrease so much that the NHS spending would halve and we could all have a decent NHS for no extra expenditure.

Baccy tax is like road tax, the government keeps most of it for itself. True, smoking is a terrible habit that I wished I'd never started, but for every £1 Tony gets of a smoker in tax, they spend 11p treating smoking related diseases, this don't take into account all the pension contributions that some people will never see (mainly those lighting a fag while driving, answering their mobile etc. etc.).
So, will smoking ever be banned ? Not in my (short) lifetime.
Rant over.
Now. Where's the stepladder to get off this soapbox ?
P.S. bRown to Right, bLue to Left

 

[securespark]

Scoby. Welcome back, mate!

If you truly feel that it is a terrible habit and you wish you had never started, it is not too late to quit!

I quit in 1994 after starting in 1976 at the stupid age of 10. I smoked like an idiot most days since then, culminating in an overnight van trip from Manchester, round Scotland and home again. I bought 200 fags for the journey, and when I got back to Sale, I had 8 left. No kid.

Yes, it was a wrench, and I do still think about it, but I feel much better.

You CAN do it. If I can, anybody can.

Someone once said to me, "Smokers smoke to feel how non-smokers feel all the time."

True or not, it gave me something to think about.

 

[mildmanneredjanitor]

You could say that about aeroplanes though: take your pick of airliner, it will have a radar in the front (in the radome, funnily enough ) of considerable power compared to any mobile phone.

An aircrafts instruments: compass, fluxgate compass, Inertial Navigation System etc. are all calibrated to allow for intererrance from eachother (deviation) If you then introduce an unknown element to this, the deviation settings will be affected.

 

[mildmanneredjanitor]

Reformed smokers...



I exhale in your general direction!
(in a French Monty Python type voice)

 

[masona]

I never understood what smoking does, does it feel good afterward or does it take time to get it into the system to benefit from it ?