Edmonton playoff games were really, really loud: study

(Graphic from the Canadian Medical Association Journal)

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From the Canadian Press / CBC:

Three hours of sitting next to a roaring, buzzing chainsaw punctuated by the occasional deafening blast of a jet taking off wouldn't be anyone's idea of a good time.

But that's the equivalent of what hockey fanatics endured during the Edmonton Oilers' Stanley Cup playoff run last spring, according to a study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

"You could tell just even in watching the games on TV that it was insanely loud," said Bill Hodgetts, the study's lead author and an assistant audiology professor at the University of Alberta.

After measuring sound levels once every second at three games during the final series between the Oilers and the Carolina Hurricanes, he determined just how insane those noise levels were - and what kind of hearing damage the racket could cause unwitting fans.

During the third game of the series, fans reached their maximum daily noise allowance in less than six minutes and they absorbed about 8,100 per cent of the top dose over the course of the game.

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