15 October (Brussels) - CENELEC, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization, has taken proactive actions to review existing standards and initiate new work in order to meet the requirements set out in the European Commission’s mandate M/452 on health and safety aspects of personal music players and mobile phones with a music playing function. The standards must ensure that under reasonably foreseeable conditions of use, such devices must be inherently safe and must not cause hearing damage.

The European Commission´s mandate is based on an opinion of the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) which assessed whether the health of citizens is appropriately protected by the current requirements of the applicable community directives as supported by the relevant European Standards.  SCENIHR concluded that personal music player listeners risk both hearing and non-hearing problems, such as cardiovascular effect, cognition and masking effects.  The most worrying is the conclusion that there is a risk of permanent hearing loss, if listening for more than one hour per day each week at high volume (exceeding 89 decibels) for at least 5 years.  Such usage patterns have become quite common, especially amongst youngsters.  The maximum sound levels of personal music players on the market range between 80-115 dB(A) across different devices, and different earphones may increase sound level by up to 7-9dB(A).

Current standards do not prescribe any maximum pressure limit nor require any specific labelling in respect of noise emissions which is one of the issues the new standards will address. The standards that will be developed will ensure that the consumer receives adequate warnings and can make a learned choice about the risks involved when using a personal music player and to the ways of avoiding them.  The standards will provide the users with information in case exposure poses a risk of hearing damage.  Information will also be provided when the original set of earphones is replaced with another type and this may cause higher unsafe sound levels.

During the development of the standard various technical features will be explored in order to improve the safety of use of personal music players, such as earphone design, noise cancelling features, automatic sound level reduction, as well as parental controls.

For further information, please contact:
Elisabeth Brodthagen                                                        
Communication Manager                                     
communication@cenelec.eu                       
Tel.: +32 2 519 68 90
www.cenelec.eu