In a survey of about eight hundred junior high school students in Kawasaki, twenty one of them were found to listen to music through headphones at loud volumes for more than five hours a week. The preferred listening levels through headphones, and hearing acuity were compared for eighteen of these 21 students. The mean listening volumes for popular and rock music for these 18 students in an ordinary room were 83 dB (A) and 85dB (A), respectively. For many of these students, a significant portion of their listening hours was done while commuting on trains. To examine if the background noise had any effect on the listening volumes, the sound environment of a train was simulated by playback of noise recorded from inside a train. The mean levels at which the subjects listened to music with this background were 89 dB (A) and 90dB (A) for pop and rock music. Although the overall listening levels were significantly higher when in the noisier environment, the increase in listening volumes was lower for those subjects who preferred to listen to music at higher sound levels in the ordinary room. It was concluded that there were no significant abnormalities in hearing acuity in the eighteen junior high school students who have listened to music through headphones at mean sound levels of 85 dB (A) in an ordinary room, 90 dB (A) in a train sound environment for a period of one to five years.
