Safety Equipment

 

a hearing trumpet

I talk a lot about not injuring yourself while weaving, but usually that is in regards to repetitive motion injuries.  There is another kind of 'injury' that can happen and that is in the area of hearing loss.

When I first got the AVL with the double box fly shuttle I was a bit astonished at how noisy the high impact plastic hammers were, hitting the shuttle.  Or rather, the shuttle hitting the hammer.

Doug was working at an industrial supply place at the time, with a special interest in safety equipment so he brought home a decibel meter and quickly determined that I need hearing protection for high impact noise.  I asked if he could find something that I could hook up to my boombox so I could listen to music.

When we added the computer assisted dobby, the noise of the solenoids firing added more noise to the general decibel level and I continued wearing hearing protection to weave pretty much all the time when I wove on that loom.

When I 'retired' the AVL and replaced it with the Megado, it took one time activating the solenoids to realize that hearing protection was necessary for it, as well.

The audiologist was astonished when I said I'd worn hearing protection to weave.  She said most people didn't realize what was happening until they had lost a big chunk of their hearing.  But, I hadn't worn it for other pieces of equipment - the pirn winder, bobbin winder, cone winder.  While their noise was a lower level than the impact noise of the fly shuttle hammers and solenoids, cumulatively they obviously took a toll and in the end I now wear hearing aids (part time).

I have 'lost' part of the ability to hear soft consonant sounds, and especially during the pandemic, aids were even more helpful when I couldn't lip read.  

I'm not the only one who has experienced hearing loss.  On a chat group a much more famous weaver spoke up and said that she had just that day returned from picking up her hearing aids.  That weaving on the AVL with *no* hearing protection meant that she now needed aids to hear.  So yes, wear hearing protection if you are weaving on a loom that is noisy.  Not all of them are.

Hearing loss can be insidious.  You don't notice that you are losing sounds, especially when it is not across the hearing spectrum, but just a portion of it.  You can still hear ok and as it begins to get worse you adapt, usually by reading lips and/or body language.  Until one day you realize you can't hear the stove timer going off in the kitchen, or an alarm on your ipad when you are in the bedroom.  Even so, the tendency is to crank the volume not think about the fact that the problem might be *your* ears.

My first clue that something might be 'off' was not being able to follow conversations when there were many happening, in a noisy environment - like a busy restaurant.  I started to tune out instead of trying to follow the general chatter.  

So, tomorrow, I will wear my hearing aids when I go to the spinning workshop.  It is supposed to be 'masks required' so I need to put my ears in so I can hear what is being said.