At 85 decibels, your hearing starts losing ground it can never recover. That is the sound level of heavy traffic or a busy restaurant, and eight hours of exposure is enough for permanent damage to begin. Most people have no idea what 85 dB sounds like in their daily life, which is exactly the problem.
I have tested the hearing of thousands of patients who believed they were careful with noise. They weren’t reckless; they simply had no frame of reference. There was the tradie who skipped earplugs because “it was only a quick job”, the teenager whose headphones sat at maximum for the whole train ride, and the office worker who went to one loud concert and woke up with tinnitus that never left. Knowing decibel levels can decide whether you hear your grandchildren clearly at 70 or struggle at 50.
What the Numbers Mean
The decibel scale is logarithmic, so it doesn’t behave the way you might expect. Each 10 dB increase means ten times the sound intensity and roughly double the perceived loudness. That makes 95 dB about twice as loud as 85 dB, and the safe exposure time falls from eight hours to 47 minutes.
For every 3 dB above 85 dB, the safe exposure time halves. At 88 dB you have four hours. At 100 dB, a nightclub or leaf blower, damage starts to accumulate after 15 minutes. At 120 dB, a rock concert or chainsaw, the damage is immediate.
Noise-induced hearing loss shows up on pure tone audiometry as a characteristic notch at 4,000 Hz. It is permanent, because hair cells in the cochlea don’t regenerate in humans. No supplement, therapy or amount of wishful thinking brings them back.
Decibel Levels of Common Sounds
Quiet sounds (0 to 50 dB)
- 0 dB: threshold of human hearing (theoretical silence)
- 10 dB: normal breathing
- 20 dB: whisper, quiet library
- 30 dB: rural area at night
- 40 dB: refrigerator hum, quiet office
- 50 dB: moderate rainfall, normal conversation at 1 metre
Moderate sounds (60 to 80 dB)
- 60 dB: restaurant conversation, air conditioner
- 70 dB: vacuum cleaner, busy traffic heard from inside your car
- 80 dB: alarm clock at 1 metre, kitchen waste disposal unit
Loud sounds, caution required (85 to 100 dB)
- 85 dB: heavy traffic, blender, hand-held drill (8-hour exposure limit)
- 90 dB: petrol lawn mower, workshop tools (2.5-hour exposure limit)
- 95 dB: motorbike, approaching tram (47-minute exposure limit)
- 100 dB: nightclub, leaf blower, circular saw (15-minute exposure limit)
Very loud sounds, hearing protection essential (105 to 120 dB)
- 105 dB: chainsaw, jet ski (5-minute exposure limit)
- 110 dB: rock concert, car horn at 1 metre (90-second exposure limit)
- 115 dB: sporting events, loud music through headphones (28-second exposure limit)
- 120 dB: ambulance siren, thunderclap, vuvuzela (immediate damage threshold)
Dangerously loud sounds (125 to 140 dB)
- 125 dB: fireworks at close range
- 130 dB: jackhammer, military jet taking off from an aircraft carrier
- 140 dB: gunshot, air raid siren (causes pain and immediate injury)
Anything above 140 dB can rupture the eardrum.
Australian Workplace Exposure Standards
Safe Work Australia sets the legal limits: 85 dB(A) averaged over eight hours, and a peak of 140 dB(C). A-weighting mimics how the human ear hears continuous noise, while C-weighting better captures peak impacts such as a hammer strike.
If you are exposed to more than 85 dB at work, your employer is legally required to provide hearing protection and run a hearing conservation program. In practice, compliance varies widely. I see workers from construction sites, factories and entertainment venues who have never had a baseline audiogram despite years of hazardous exposure. By the time they notice the hearing loss, significant damage has already occurred.
The Hearing Services Program (HSP) covers some workers in high-noise industries for testing and hearing aids, but you need to be eligible, which generally means being a pensioner or veteran or meeting other specific criteria. Most workers pay out of pocket or rely on private health insurance, which typically pays $500 to $1,500 a year across both hearing aids.
How Loud Is 120 dB?
When patients ask how loud 120 dB is, I tell them it is a chainsaw at arm’s length, or standing next to the speaker stack at a rock concert. It is the point where sound becomes physically painful, and damage happens at once instead of building up over hours.
At 120 dB the sound pressure is intense enough to cause acoustic trauma: a temporary or permanent threshold shift, a ruptured eardrum (tympanic membrane) or damage to the ossicles. I have seen patients after a single exposure at this level, such as fireworks too close, an unprotected gunshot or an airbag going off, who developed permanent tinnitus or sudden hearing loss. Some recover partly; many don’t.
You can be exposed to 120 dB and walk away feeling fine, because the adrenaline of the concert or the job site masks the symptoms. The next morning your ears are ringing or your hearing is muffled, and you assume it will pass. Sometimes it does, but sometimes the temporary threshold shift becomes permanent.
Safe Decibel Levels and Exposure Times
Safe exposure times come from decades of occupational health research into how noise level and duration relate to the risk of hearing damage. The rule is 85 dB for eight hours, halving the time for every 3 dB increase.
- 85 dB: 8 hours
- 88 dB: 4 hours
- 91 dB: 2 hours
- 94 dB: 1 hour
- 97 dB: 30 minutes
- 100 dB: 15 minutes
- 103 dB: 7.5 minutes
- 106 dB: 3.75 minutes
These limits mark the point where permanent damage statistically begins in the average adult ear. Children are more vulnerable, as are ears already affected by noise or ototoxic medication, and individual susceptibility varies.
Children, Headphones and Safe Listening
The WHO recommends keeping children’s headphone listening below 75 dB, but most children have their devices turned up to maximum. Smartphones can put out 100 to 110 dB through headphones, and at full volume damage starts after 15 minutes.
I have tested teenagers with hearing thresholds you would expect in a 50-year-old industrial worker. When I ask about headphones, the answer is always the same: hours a day, at high volume, for years. Their parents had no idea. The damage is in both ears, symmetrical and permanent.
Apple and Android devices now include hearing health features, such as volume limits and alerts when you have gone past safe listening levels. Use them, and set your child’s device to 70% of maximum volume. If they say they can’t hear properly, get headphones with better noise isolation so they aren’t competing with background noise.
Sound Level Meter Apps: Are They Accurate?
Sound meter apps turn your smartphone into a basic sound level meter using its built-in microphone, and patients often ask me whether they are accurate.
They are usually within 2 to 5 dB, which is accurate enough for everyday awareness. A phone microphone isn’t calibrated to the standard of a professional Class 1 or Class 2 sound level meter, but it can tell you whether a place is too loud.
Apps I have seen patients use successfully include NIOSH Sound Level Meter (free, iOS/Android), Decibel X and SoundPrint. Most show real-time decibel levels, log your exposure over time and warn you when you pass safe limits.
Phone microphones clip (distort) at very high levels, usually around 100 to 110 dB, so they are less reliable in very loud places. For those, or for anything that needs legal documentation, you need a properly calibrated meter.
What to Do Now
Check your phone’s hearing health features. On iPhone, go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Headphone Safety, turn on Reduce Loud Sounds and set it to 85 dB. On Android the location varies by manufacturer, so look for “Sound” or “Hearing” in Settings.
Download a sound meter app and use it. Measure your commute, your workplace, your local café and a concert. A feel for what 85 dB sounds like is worth more than memorising charts.
Buy earplugs you will actually wear. Foam plugs from the chemist work well and cut sound by 25 to 30 dB. Musicians’ earplugs (around $30 to $40) keep sound quality while lowering the volume. Custom-moulded plugs ($150 to $300) are worth it if you are regularly somewhere loud.
If you have had significant noise exposure, whether one loud event or years of it, book a baseline audiogram. Pure tone audiometry records your current hearing thresholds. If there is damage, you need to know, because the next exposure will hit an ear that is already compromised. We can also check middle ear function with tympanometry, and look for early noise damage with extended high-frequency testing.
Preventing Noise-Induced Hearing Loss
Most noise-induced hearing loss is preventable, but prevention means knowing what is dangerous. Eighty-five decibels is the ceiling. Above it you are on a timer, and the louder the sound, the faster the damage builds.
If your ears are ringing after last night’s concert, if you work somewhere loud and are worried, or if you can hear your teenager’s headphones from across the room, book an appointment. In the last case, turn the volume down first.
This information is general in nature and is not medical advice. For assessment and management specific to your hearing, book a full hearing assessment at The Audiology Place.
Article last reviewed: May 2025
