The hearing process is extremely complex and so is the hearing mechanism. Most of us think of the ear as the pinna – the outer ear that we can see. But within our skulls is a complex collection of hearing parts. There’s the ear drum, the three smallest bones in the human body and a snail-shaped organ called the cochlea. The cochlea is a fluid filled organ lined with millions of hair-like projections waving in the cochlear fluid called hair-cells.
When a sound is produced – the doorbell rings – it activates a disturbance in the air in the form of sound waves. These sound waves are captured by the outer ear, directed down the ear canal where they vibrate the ear drum, also called the tympanic membrane. The ear drum vibrates in perfect sync with the frequency of the doorbell chime.
Next, these vibrations are passed through three small bones which then pass sound vibrations to the fluid-filled cochlea where the vibrations are picked up by the hair-cells which then transmit sound to the brain via electrical impulses along the auditory nerve.
Studies reveal that the dangerous chemicals in cigarette smoke affect can affect both the conductive mechanism in hearing (the middle ear vibrations) as well as the inner ear part of the hearing (the hair cells).
The affect smoking has on hearing appears to be correlated with the amount of cigarettes smoked. In a study conducted on Japanese office workers who smoke, the research showed “that as the number of cigarettes smoked per day and pack years of smoking increased, the risk for high-frequency hearing loss increased in a dose dependent manner…”
In other words, the more people smoked each day and the longer they smoked, the worse the hearing damage was – especially in the high frequency range – the high-pitched sounds like birds tweeting.