58% of Young Brits Have Hearing Damage: Leading Noise Engineer Demands Legal Limit

Hertfordshire, United Kingdom Sep 29, 2026 (Issuewire.com) - David Kilpatrick, founder of Advanced Noise Solutions and a noise control engineer who has spent 40 years protecting factory workers' hearing, is calling on the Government to set a legal limit of 85 decibels on amplified music and speech.

It follows a 2025 survey of 2,000 young adults for the hearing charity RNID, which found that 58% of UK 18- to 28-year-olds have already experienced hearing loss, tinnitus or both after listening to loud music. Three quarters knew the risk. Over a third still did not plan to wear hearing protection.

Kilpatrick says the problem is not awareness. It is the law.

"If you work in a noisy factory, the law is on your side. Your employer has to measure the noise, act on it at 85 decibels and give you hearing protection. Walk into a nightclub, gig, football ground or a wedding disco that same evening, and the law says nothing at all."

Since 2008, everyone working in a music venue, from DJs to sound engineers, has been protected by noise at work regulations. The paying audience standing closer to the speakers is protected by nothing. The only UK figure for audiences is a Health and Safety Executive recommendation of 107 decibels. It is guidance, not law, and nobody enforces it.

Same room. Two different rules.

The harm builds fast. In a typical nightclub at around 100 decibels, the full daily dose allowed at the 85 decibel work limit runs out in just 15 minutes. And the damage is permanent: the hair cells in the inner ear do not grow back.

Britain is also out of step with its neighbours. France, Belgium and Switzerland all set legal limits on amplified sound. Britain sets none.

"The solution costs nothing," says Kilpatrick. "Turn the volume down to a reasonable level and you protect people's hearing, and the music still sounds good. It is a dial that already exists, that someone is choosing to turn up too far."

"I have been lobbying Governments to do this for decades, with no success," he adds. "It is not radical. It is the protection workers have had for a generation, extended to everyone else."

The full evidence, including a country-by-country comparison and a timeline of UK noise law, is covered in the hearing loss campaign. Kilpatrick sets out why the Government must act in his full article: 58% of Young Brits Are Losing Their Hearing: The Government Must Act.

The public can help by sharing the campaign and asking their MP why amplified sound still has no legal limit.

About Advanced Noise Solutions:

Advanced Noise Solutions is a UK industrial noise control specialist founded in 2003 by David Kilpatrick, a mechanical engineer who specialised in noise reduction at Bath University. David still runs the company and carries out every project himself. With 40 years of industrial noise work behind him, he has delivered projects for many of the UK's best-known food, drinks and pharmaceutical companies.

Media Contact

David Kilpatrick

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01727 864667

https://www.advanced-noise-solutions.co.uk/