Protecting hearing

Barnaby Griffin: My name is Barnaby Griffin and I'm volunteering for RNID and here we are at the Summer Sundae Festival. We basically try and arm the young people with the knowledge that listening to loud music for a long period of time can damage their ears. You know, a few people that we do speak to, they think 'why should I care? I like my loud music, the louder the better.' But I've been quite surprised at actually how many are very interested in looking after their ears and when you tell them that there are ear plugs designed specifically for listening to music, you know, they get interested and we show them the different products that we have.

But the main thrust of this campaign and coming to these festivals is just to raise awareness really and just to engage with the public. Some of the things we have, we have children's ear defenders, which are very popular with parents and these are for children from six months to ten years old, because, obviously, young people's ears are very, very sensitive to loud noise. They go down very well. They come in a variety of colours, pink, yellow, blue and red.

Woman with baby: You dragged me here in the rain. Now what are you doing to me!

Barnaby Griffin: Since doing this campaign, I've met a lot of people in their 20s, musicians, DJs, who actually have tinnitus and quite severe tinnitus and they've got it for life. You know, the only treatment is therapy and, of course, it can lead to other things such as depression. It's amazing how many young people aren't aware that anything over 80 to 85 decibels for long periods of time could actually incur some kind of hearing damage.

The response has actually been fantastic because young people, they do value their hearing but don't think about it so much. So when you're telling them things they don't actually know, there's a kind of feeling of satisfaction there.

We get a lot of DJs coming in here, a lot of musicians coming in here, purchasing those things, which is quite good, you know, they're obviously taking steps to protect themselves.

Woman in hat: We've just done a questionnaire about our listening habits for music and we learnt a lot about hearing loss and the dangers of listening to loud music.

Woman with long red hair: I didn't realise that using ear plugs could actually enhance listening to something rather than actually just muffling it. So that was quite a key point, I think.

Barnaby Griffin: These are the steps that people can take to ensure that they can enjoy music from now and a long time into the future.