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Loud Music Can Cause Lung Collapse
ahrenritter writes "This Reuters article discusses a report in the medical journal Thorax describing the cases of three young men who suffered a lung collapse (pneumothorax) apparently triggered by standing too close to very loud concert speakers. A fourth case occurred in a car that was outfitted with a 1,000 watt bass box. I guess deafness isn't all we have to worry about now!"
I don't think it's fair to place this solely on music. There are many things far louder than your average concert. It's interesting nonetheless. If you've never seen bands like Floor, High on Fire, Khanate, or SunnO))), you really can't understand how sound waves can have that much power. When I saw Floor, my entire body shook. When they'd do sudden stops I felt like I was going to fall over. The only thing I've heard that is louder than them are top fuel (nitromethane powered) dragsters.
Before you ask, I wear earplugs at every show I go to.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
but anyone else ever been at a concert with such low rumbling rediculous bass that you can feel your heart beating a little off?
this only happened to me with dead voices on air, which uses a rediculous about of computer processing, but this was beyond nautious.
I used to sit in the back of my friend's cougar that has dual 12in 600W kickers (if I'm remembering correctly)... and I used to kinda joke about how it affected my breathing when I was back there...
...heh, well, I guess ignorance is bliss.
I had pneumothorax back in February, but it wasn't sound related. I was in the shower and for no apparent reason I felt as though someone had hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer. I thought it was a heart attack at first, but since I was only 21 I ruled that out as unlikely.
I waited 3 days before I actually went to the hospital and those were the most agonizing days of my life. I'd run out of breath walking from my apartment to my car (literally, 10 feet). I just had this sharp stabbing pain in the left side of my chest. When I went to the hospital the doctor told me that it was rare spontaneous pneumothorax, and that it usually happened to tall, scrawny males that were smokers (I'm not a smoker). Anyways, 5 hours later I left the hospital with a tube coming out of my chest and a prescription for some Darvocet. I had to keep that tube in my chest to relieve the pressure that was preventing my lung from inflating for 3 days.
It was really interesting to look at my chest x-rays though. My left lung had completely collapsed! It's never a good thing when doctors are telling everyone that's walking by the computer screen to "Check out how collapsed this lung is!"
Anyway, I just wanted to give some first hand experience.