"Let the rhythm pound!" the hiphop group Black Eyed Peas implore in a song titled "Play It Loud." And if you like pop music, chances are you'd like to listen to it that way -- loud. But whenever you crank up the volume on your portableMP3 playerand shove those little buds into your ears, you're exposing yourself to sound levels as high as 120 decibels -- a level that's comparable in intensity to a jet engine [source:Science Daily]. And you may well be paying a high price for your pleasure. A study published in 2010 in Journal of the American Medical Association found that nearly one in five U.S. teenagers already has some degree of hearing loss, probably as a result of listening to loud music while wearing those buds [source:Ostrow].
But if you think you'll never again be able to listen to your favorite Foo Fighters or U2 songs while jogging, don't despair. What if you had a way to listen to music on a portable player without putting anything in your ears? As it turns out, it can be done. All you need is a set of bone-conducting headphones, a gadget designed to transmit sound directly to the innermost part of the ear that sends nerve impulses to the brain -- even while bypassing portions of theear. Folks call these magical devices "bonephones."
Advertisement
