A recent study has revealed that permanent use of a mobile phone may harm a person’s internal ear and high frequency hearing capacity

While presenting the study at the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation’s Annual Meeting and OTO EXPO in Washington, DC, the scientists stated that 100 people who had used cell phones for more than a year experienced increases in the degree of deafness over the period of 12 months.

The investigators have also discovered that people who used their phones for over 60 minutes each day had a worse hearing threshold than others with lesser use.

High frequency deafness is described by the loss of ability to hear consonants for example s, f, t, and z, even though vowels can be heard normally. Due to high frequency deafness, people hear sounds but fail to hint what is being sounded out.

The study authors said that fall outs including ear fullness, ear warmth, and ringing in the ears are the early warning signs of a hearing abnormality.

The researchers also stated that the use of headphones was safer than holding a cellular phone up to the ears.