[Anechoic]

FYI, there's been tons of research of the effects of noise on sleep from different sources. There have been studies ranging from in-lab experiments, to in-home experiments with artificial and natural sources. If you're interested, some resources:

Institute of Noise Control Engineering Digital library: https://www.inceusa.org/publications/ince-digital-library/ (papers older than 10 years old are available free)

Federal Interagency Committee on Aviation Noise: https://fican1.wordpress.com/findings/ (focuses on aviation noise)

Acoustical Society of America Lay Language Papers: https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/ (search for "sleep" -- the ASA has a full library of more detailed research but the documents cost money unless you're an ASA member)

World Health Organization guidelines on noise - https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/343936/WHO-EURO-... (doesn't get into specifics on research on sleep, but does refer recommended limits to sleep disturbance)

NIH has done a bunch of research on sleep disturbance from noise, you would need to search through their library

edit (one more): TRB/National Academies https://nap.nationalacademies.org/search/?rpp=20&ft=1&term=n...

A lot of the stuff that posters are asking for have in fact been done, it just takes some digging through the research sites to find them. There's a lot of variation in the data, the hypothesis is that sleep sensitivity varies a lot based on various physical factors (age being a big one).

[ChuckMcM]

Interesting, perhaps age related deafness contributes.

[schiffern]

  >age-related deafness

Interestingly, there's been some suggestion that hearing loss is not inevitable with age, but is mostly just the accumulation of noise-related hearing loss in a loud industrial society.

https://canadianaudiologist.ca/a-new-perspective-on-chronic-...

https://www.icben.org/2017/ICBEN%202017%20Papers/SubjectArea...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-024-00660-3

I think partly the issue is that how we measure noise doesn't match how noise causes injury. Your cochlea acts as a spiral resonant tube, essentially a "physical FFT," concentrating energy at a particular frequency onto a particular location in the spiral. Too much (local!) energy damages the hair cells, causing conductive hearing loss.

But because we calculate A-weighted decibels by summing all frequencies and then checking if we're above the injury threshold (vs checking whether we exceed the injury threshold at any frequency), using A-weighted decibels can't accurately determine damaging noise levels. If all the energy is concentrated at Middle A it will cause more damage than spreading the energy out across the spectrum, even if the A-weighted decibels come out equal.

It's a somewhat subtle, wrong order-of-operations problem. There's also a separate problem that A-weighting is designed to normalize for perception at various frequencies, not hearing damage.

I've tried searching the literature to find out whether this is either 1)wrong, or 2)generally known within the fields of audiology and occupational hygiene, but so far I've come up empty.

--

I recall an HN poster long ago saying how they wore earplugs daily to achieve "super hearing." It occurs to me that all they were doing was actually protecting their ears from damage. :-|

[Anechoic]

I've tried searching the literature to find out whether this is either 1)wrong, or 2)generally known within the fields of audiology and occupational hygiene, but so far I've come up empty.

FWIW, I've also heard the same, but don't remember where off the top of my head. It's at least potentially true, but the conventional wisdom among acousticians/noise control engineering is that age-related hearing loss is mostly to increasing age rather than external factors.

[schiffern]

Oh, I meant about the wrong order-of-operations problem with decibels, which I have never seen anyone talk about. If you've heard of it please let me know.

The links discuss the evidence that hearing loss isn't inevitable with age, including examples of pre-industrial societies with quiet environments that when tested showed no hearing degradation with age.

The controversy seems to be mostly about how much of that effect was caused by good diet vs lack of exposure to loud sounds. I tend to think both are needed to be fully protective, eg to take an extreme example alcohol is known to cause damage to hearing cells even without exposure to loud sounds.

I expect, with apologies to Tolstoy, "All dysfunctional hearing is different, whereas all healthy hearing is the same."

[Ntrails]

I'd expect the relationship goes the other way around. Most old people I know sleep lightly comparatively