Don't shoot the messenger for this one. But...
When I got my pilots license, I had to do an audiology test. I was 42 at the time. The report showed a 25% loss in my right ear, and a lower (but seemingly significant) 15% loss in my left ear. I asked the audiologist if long term listening to loud rock music was the reason for my loss and she told me that most of the cases that she dealt with were not attributed to loud music at all. Then she asked me what I did for a living and I told her I was a meat cutter. Then she asked me about machinery that ran at high frequency noise. I told her about the band saw that ran at high speed. she looked at me and told me point blank that that was the reason right there. Saws are one of the worst culprits for ear and hearing damage. It isn't the noise level/dB at fault, but the frequency of the noise over extended periods of time.
I then told her about a certain concert I attended where myself and a friend were standing right beside the stage while Colin James was rocking out. We were right in front of the speaker stack and the sound was ridiculously loud. Of course we were rather "tuned up" at the time and we thought it was best to be as close as we could get (Colin's drummer was a friend of ours). She then told me that while it was possible to sustain some damage from that, it was more due to my repeated exposure to the noise of the saw for the previous 20 years.
But given repeated exposure to any loud noise, it will eventually reduce the human auditory abilities. And I am more careful in my practice room than I likely would be had I not had that test.
Not that I don't crank it and still rock out down there. It's R&R after all.
