Interesting. I hadn't heard about those. I doubt it would handle 90db though. That's pretty loud, probably dangerously so for an extended period; it's about how loud a lawn mower is when you're operating it.
the 90dB of noise masking isn't all sound energy. they're also ear plugs (on the less effective end of things) so 15-20dB of that 90 is from jamming them into the ear canal.
You don’t need nearly as much hearing protection for lawn mowers and motorcycles compared to someone operating a jackhammer or similarly loud equipment for hours a day.
When I cut grass professionally I would wear my headphones and then put muff style hearing protection over my ears. This combo allowed me to listen to podcasts while running a large gas powered zero degree mower.
I used my original AirPods Pro as hearing protection on a table saw. It's not a terribly loud saw and I use thin kerf blades, but it's quite comfortable. At age 36 I can still heard 16-17kHz tones (typically you hear up to 15k by 40), so it seems to be working well enough.
For my giant router I use muffs. The AirPods act funny around stuff that loud, and it stops feeling comfortable.
For these reasons I have been using ear muffs (similar to the ones you would use for lawn mowing). Currently I am using Howard Leight Sync. It's basically an "over the ear" ear plug when it's not on. You can also use them as poor quality headphones.
It gets hot, but it seems to be one of the best solutions I have found.
As long as the frequency is between 1 and 10kHZ then well fitting earplugs should reduce the pressure level by 20 to 30dB. If you combine with earmuffs or noise cancelling headphones then that could approach 40dB [1]. Indeed the manufacturer of one system recommends that operators use hearing protection such as earplugs [2].
My work earplugs aren't rated for super high decibels, but they're a step up from the disposable ones most folks I work with use. They're definitely a solid step up from what most folks are going to buy from the hardware store. I've got coworkers who can converse loudly enough that I can make out the entire conversation over the normal shop noise the earplugs are supposed to be for while 200 feet away and within an enclosed (but not particularly thick-walled) office.
Earplugs will dull the noise, but if I can't take a nap over two guys having a conversation at that distance, I really doubt most folks' ability to get a good night's sleep over truck horns. The earplugs will probably mitigate the physical damage done by the noise, but I highly doubt they do much for the psychological stress. People lose their ability to focus and sometimes their sanity due to injuries that cause a constant ringing in their ears. Even if you can reduce the volume, the constant noise is a type of torture.
Edit: Found the Noise Reduction Rating for a number of different types of hearing pro that I've used in the past. The best one was rated at 33, meaning it roughly reduces the noise by something like 33 decibels. That pair, of course, being the ubiquitous neon yellow 3M product with flames on the sides for enhanced performance. I don't wear them myself because while they're fashionable, they're incredibly uncomfortable for me. This also appears to be among the best non-powered hearing pro that's available on the market. They will take an uncomfortably loud worksite at 105 dB down to effectively under 80 dB and more-or-less within a safe range for hearing. Not a pleasant level for sleeping though, by any means, although I can pull it off myself if I'm tired enough. When you start talking about a truck horn which those earplugs might or might not be able to quiet down close to the level of that 105 dB you'd experience with no hearing pro on a worksite, you're past potential hearing damage and well into a range where there is no reasonable escape from the barrage of sound.
Edit 2: Most of these earplugs in the 25-33 NRR range are definitely available at the hardware store if anyone needs to know that. They're more expensive per pair and seem to come in higher count containers, but they're there and much cheaper than the doctor's visits and hearing aids will be in the future. If you find yourself in a situation where the background noise is uncomfortable at all, please, please, get yourself some if at all feasible. Half the old dudes I've worked with in my life did not think it was worth the hassle and I'm tired of having to scream in people's ears to communicate. Also all the near misses because you have to either throw something at them or close the distance if you see a dangerous situation they don't and need to warn them.
This is one of the weirder things I’ve ever read here and I read a lot of strange behaviors here. You wear earplugs full time man, that’s not normal, you are missing out on unimpeded hearing due to a fear of hearing loss that likely is not based on science. Normal level sounds don’t degrade hearing as far as I know and loud sounds aren’t that common, certainly not enough to warrant wearing earplugs full time.
I use hearing protection. It's a lot louder and more sudden than a power tool, especially when amplified in a small enclosed space. If I were on a shooting range it'd be no big deal, but not unexpectedly in my garage.
Is it not typical for the military to have hearing protection? My highschool gun club had earmuffs with active noise suppression that would dampen sound above a certain DB level.
We have a set of kid sized ear-guards that my son prefer to wear when I vacuum with my Dyson vacuum cleaner. It's extremely loud and very srill (but it's also very effective).
I recommend using ear defenders whenever possible in louder environments. They're much more powerful than earplugs and much cheaper. A 30 decibel reduction for $30 is quite realistic.
This is a statement of profound and frustrating ignorance. It's not physically possible even in the best case to use over-the-ear or in-ear protection (even doubled or tripled up) to reduce ~2kHz sound by more than 40dB or so, because that's how much reduction a human skull provides. No matter how blocked off your ears are sound will still be transmitted through flesh/bone. More realistically, even 30 dB of reduction is quite good. And a naked firearm can easily be 160-175 dB at the muzzle, and it's hard to overstate how VERY loud that is. A chainsaw is like 110 dB, and remember this is a log scale. Every 10 dB = 10x the energy (only about 3x the perceived "loudness", but it's energy that matters for cellular damage). Furthermore, firing inside (or next to any large hard surfaces that can reflect sound) can increase the total exposure.
A sibling post writes "Firing a gun with no hearing protection is a pretty jarring experience", but let's be clear: ANY exposure to sound over 140 dB or so mean instantaneous permanent hearing loss. Period. "Jarring" isn't quite the adjective. A single use doesn't mean you just go deaf or even "merely" get tinnitus, but it does mean you just burned some of your hearing forever. It doesn't heal and there isn't any treatment. For practice with regular usage even with ear protection it's quite possible to exceed NIOSH limits on sound exposure. Obviously lots of people just live with that, but hearing loss is serious. There is environmental damage and bystanders to consider as well. All of this of course ignores that for self defense at home someone might not have time to put on ear pro at all.
The only way to really make guns hearing safe is to double up on multiple physically different methods combining both hearing protection and sound reduction of the gun itself. A suppressor can take a gun down to the 130-150dB range, and then a further 20-30 dB of ear protection takes that to 100-130dB for the shooter. Subsonic ammunition can also be use, sacrificing performance to eliminate the supersonic crack and somewhat reduce sound too.
Suppressors should just be standard safety equipment. The Hollywood meme where you screw something onto a rifle and now it sounds like a can of compressed air is as real as people jumping through plate glass windows (actually made of sugar) and other such ridiculous physics. 130dB is still LOUD, you will absolutely here that from a distance. The original impetus in America for trying to make them a thing only for rich people was concerns about "poaching" by poor people and ties into a bunch of class warfare there. It's an obsolete consideration for a host of reasons at this point. The societal benefits of less hearing damage would be considerable, it's now known quite a number of significant issues like dementia can be influenced by hearing loss.
Standard ear protection attenuates about 15-30db.
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