Valencia’s Cathedral Church Bell Acoustics Impact on the Hearing Abilities of Bell Ringers

Abstract

Studies on the effect of occupational noise have been widely performed for occupations such as construction workers, workers of factories or even musicians and workers of nightclubs. However, studies on the acoustics of church bells are very scarce and usually reported in languages other than English. In Spain, although the tradition of bell ringers is progressively getting lost, some bell ringers that continue transmitting the tradition remain. Church bells create sound with a large sound pressure level that can be heard from a great distance. However, despite the characteristics of the sound of church bells, bell ringers do not present symptoms of occupational hearing loss unlike musicians and construction workers. To determine the effects of the sound of the church bells on bell ringers, in this paper, an acoustic study of the church bells and a physiological study of the hearing abilities of bell ringers. Results show sound pressure levels reaching 120 dB inside the bell tower. The resulting hearing loss in bell ringers is small considering the great intensity of the sound produced by the bells. This is likely due to the short amount of time that bell ringers are exposed to the sound even if it reaches high sound pressure levels.

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Practitioners’ Views on Bell-Ringing Practice in Contemporary Society in New South Wales (Australia)

“…A number of academic studies have examined the acoustic properties of religious structures, such as functional (Desarnaulds et al 2002;Alvarez-Morales and Martellotta 2015), liturgical (Westermeyer 2009;Prasad 2015), technical (Ansay and Zannin 2016;Álvarez-Morales et al 2014;Orfali 2007;Orfali and Ahnert 2006;Soeta et al 2013;Kumar et al 2008) and workplace safety aspects (García et al 2019;Felipe Silva and Cabral 2011), the effects of wind direction and strength on sound distribution (Trikootam and Hornikx 2019), and the environmental effects of bell ringing in terms of ground motion (Diaz 2020). At least one study assessed people's perceptions of nighttime bell ringing with regard to sleep disturbance (Brink et al 2011), while another tried to examine the effects of bell ringing on house prices in the vicinity of churches (Brandt et al 2013).…”

High-Frequency Audiometry in Women with and without Exposure to Workplace Noise

“…In a study by Garcia et al, hearing loss was observed at higher frequencies compared to conventional pure-tone audiometry, with the range from 9 kHz to 11.25 kHz being the most affected. These results indicate that high-frequency audiometry could be useful in the early diagnosis of acoustic trauma in those who have not yet been affected in conventionally investigated frequencies [ 13 ]. These conclusions were also confirmed by the results of our work.…”

“…Hearing loss is usually bilateral and symmetrical; however, when the exposure is acute, damage to only one ear may also be found. There is also a frequent association between tinnitus and otalgia following noise exposure [ 13 ].…”

On enhancing model‐based expectation maximization source separation in dynamic reverberant conditions using automatic Clifton effect

“…Another interesting application would be to use our proposed algorithm in assisted protection headphones for separating noise from the required signal. These headphones are designed to prevent hearing loss to construction workers, workers of factories, musicians and workers of night clubs who are exposed to occupational noise for long durations [39]. The headphone model proposed in [40] suppresses both the signal of interest and noise without any discrimination between them when their level increases beyond the pre-set threshold.…”