notabot , 6 months ago

Music has nowhere near the same ‘impulse’. The shockwave from an explosion has the presure jump from atmospheric to massive in an incredibly short timeframe, before falling back over maybe a few tens of milliseconds. It’s this sharp transition that’s likely to be causing the damage, but as I said, there’s not enough research in the area.

Interestingly I’ve just come across a https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5483448/ showing DNA and structural damage to the brain from exposure to loud noise, so it’s not just blasts that’ll do it.

We’re really only just starting to realise all the ways we can damage our brains, I suspect there is a lot more surprising science to come.