Noise above 70 dB over a prolonged period of time may start to damage your hearing. Loud noise above 120 dB can cause immediate harm to your ears.
Louder sounds do irreversible damage more quickly – 100 decibels can threaten your hearing after just 15 minutes, while 110 decibels is an immediate cause of hearing loss.
You're at risk of hearing damage after just 15 minutes when you're in an average nightclub, which plays music at 100dB, if you don't use earplugs to protect your ears. For sounds of 110–120dB, even a very short exposure time can cause hearing damage.
At 85 decibels, the maximum recommended exposure time is 8 hours. By 100 decibels, the noise exposure limit drops to 15 minutes, and at 10 decibels more (110 dB), the risk exposure time plummets to just one minute. Exposure to sound levels for longer than that could result in permanent hearing loss.
How loud is a gunshot? Decibel levels for firearms average between 140 and 165 dB.
A nuclear bomb.
Decibel meters set 250 feet away from test sites peaked at 210 decibels. The sound alone is enough to kill a human being, so if the bomb doesn't kill you, the noise will. Fun fact!
Loud appliances such as a vacuum cleaner or power tools could exceed 80 dB. Human screams can be quite loud, possibly exceeding 100 dB (as of March 2019, the world record is 129 dB!) —but you probably want to avoid that because screams that loud can hurt your ears!
Any noise over 120 decibels, for any length of time, will cause hearing damage and elicit physical pain in your ear. Additionally, noises that register at 150 decibels will rupture a human eardrum.
100 decibels is a suitable level for headphones but for no more than 15 minutes. Exposure exceeding 15 minutes may cause hearing damage or hearing loss.
The effective distance of a 100 dB(A) sounder in a very noisy environment is 1.8m, the distance for a 120 dB(A) sounder is approx 18m (10 times the distance).
That's usually around this sound level on most smartphones. 5 minutes will be enough to be dangerous at this level. 120 dB and over: Anything over 120 dB (think loud rock show or exceptionally large sports events) can produce instant injury and pain in your ears.
The average noise volume at a concert or festival is around 100 decibels.
How Long Can You Listen to It? You cannot listen to 130 dB sounds for even a few seconds without wearing hearing protection if you are standing right next to the sound source. However, if you distance yourself from the 130 dB sound, its intensity will decrease and the further you are from it, the safer you will be.
The noise intensity to rupture an eardrum would have to be very loud, usually 165 decibels or more. This would correspond to the sound intensity of a gunshot at close range, fireworks or extremely loud music.
Noise above 70 dB over a prolonged period of time may start to damage your hearing. Loud noise above 120 dB can cause immediate harm to your ears.
But what about the loudest sound ever heard? On the morning of 27 August 1883, on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa, a volcanic eruption produced what scientists believe to be the loudest sound produced on the surface of the planet, estimated at 310 decibels (dB).
At 194 dB, the energy in the sound waves starts distorting and they create a complete vacuum between themselves. The sound is no longer moving through the air, but is in fact pushing the air along with it, forming a pressurized wall of moving air.
Converting the energy of 1,100 decibels to mass yields 1.113x1080 kg, meaning that the radius of the resulting black hole's event horizon would exceed the diameter of the known universe. Voila!
According to Coren, when sounds are between 3,000 and 12,000 Hz in frequency, dogs' ears are far more sensitive than ours. They can hear those sounds when they are between -5 dB and -15 dB on average. That means dogs can hear sounds that are not loud enough for our ears.
There is at least some testing footage from the era that features sound. It is jarring to hear. The boom is more like a shotgun than a thunderclap, and it's followed by a sustained roar. Here's one example, from a March 1953 test at Yucca Flat, the nuclear test site in the Nevada desert.
This damage may correspond to a distance of about 3 miles (4.8 km) from ground zero for a 10 KT nuclear explosion. The damage in this area will be highly variable as shock waves rebound multiple times off of buildings, the terrain, and even the atmosphere.
The flash was accompanied by a rush of heat and was followed by a huge pressure wave and the rumbling sound of the explosion. Curiously enough, this sound was not distinctly noted by those who survived near the center of the explosion, although it was heard as far as 15 miles away.