Wired for sound? Turn it down! Safer surfing Illegal drug use goes digital
There are more than 50 million iPods attached to ears worldwide by the signature white headphones. They—and all other portable MP3 players—are a great way to take your music with you wherever you go. But as Children's Hospital Boston researchers are finding, pumping up their pure digital sound is a dangerously easy way to lose your hearing.
Brian Fligor, ScD, director of Diagnostic Audiology at Children's, is working to change that. His recent studies of headphone and earbud volume found that listeners could suffer hearing loss if they regularly listen for just one hour to volume settings above 6 on a scale of 1 to10. Data was collected using the Knowles Electronic Man for Acoustic Research, or KEMAR, a mannequin with a simulated external ear and ear canal.
KEMAR is fitted with a microphone that acts as the ear drum, collecting and transferring sound into a computer that identifies levels at which hearing loss can occur. "People don't know how high is too high or how long is too long before hearing loss occurs," says Fligor. "KEMAR helps us answer those questions."
With tens of millions of people owning MP3 players, the researcher warns that hundreds of thousands could develop hearing loss. "I want to arm consumers with safe guidelines so they can keep listening for many years to come," says Fligor.
As a peer educator with the Center for Young Women's Health (CYWH) at Children's Hospital Boston, 17-year-old Pauline Chin is well aware of the dangers lurking on the Internet. She often presents on the topic to teen groups around Boston and shares true stories of teenage girls who met sexual predators online and were lured to meet them. All of the stories ended well, but the underlying message is clear: These girls were lucky.
"Everyone I know has a blog on sites like My Space or Facebook," says Chin, "and so many of them share personal information."
To help protect girls when they go online, the CYWH launched the Internet Safety Project. Phaedra Thomas, RN, BSN, the center's nurse coordinator, met with law enforcement experts to develop a curriculum complete with a facilitator manual, icebreakers and group activities. She and the peer educators take this information to community youth groups to discuss Internet safety with girls ages 12 to 18.
The project's teen-friendly guide and quizzes teach girls how to identify reliable sites and give suggestions, such as talking with parents before filling out on-line profiles, tips on choosing an identity for chats and much more.
"We want girls to approach the Internet the same way they would approach a new neighborhood or a party: safely, aware of where they are and who they are with," says Thomas.
For more information, including an in-depth curriculum on Internet safety for teachers and others who work with girls, visit
www.youngwomenshealth.org and www.4girls.gov.
In 1996, two teenagers were admitted to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) emergency room saying they had overdosed on GHB, or gamma hydroxybutyric acid. The drug is today known as the "date rape drug," but it was virtually unknown to hospital staff at the time.
When they recovered, the teens told doctors they had used the Internet to learn how to synthesize GHB and figure out how much they could safely take.
Although GHB is normally prescribed for sleep disorders, the teens read that it provides euphoric feelings and extreme relaxation, and decided to give it a try.
Children's Hospital Boston researcher Edward Boyer, MD, worked at CHOP at the time of the overdose, and was intrigued by the role the Internet had played in the boys' drug use. So he decided to investigate further. "The more we learned, the more interesting it got," he says.
Boyer recently conducted a year-long study of the Internet usage of 12 drug users between the ages of 13 and 25. He found that all of the participants changed their behavior in some way over the course of the year, with some starting to use new drugs, some taking new precautions and still others stopping substance use altogether.
Boyer also found something troubling: Participants were more likely to use online drug encyclopedias to gather their information, citing government anti-drug Web sites as untrustworthy, but much of the information on non-government sites is pro-drug use and often inaccurate or misleading.
"The ability to spread information via the Internet is massive and extremely powerful," says Boyer. "Right now it's being used to disseminate incorrect
information on drug use, but we're hoping to get correct information out there so we can avoid dangerous overdoses like I saw in Philadelphia."
