Rates of hearing loss climbing for troops [View All]

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Yet while all the armed services are scrambling to come up with better hearing protection, the Army is slashing its staff of military audiologists – the specialists who combat hearing loss – to make room for more "trigger pullers" at the front. Only two military audiologists, for example, are at Fort Hood, home base for more than 40,000 soldiers.

•Perhaps a fourth – and probably more – of troops who have served in Iraq since March 2003 have returned with hearing loss from gunfire, bomb blasts or other noise.

•Exact figures on how many troops have suffered hearing damage in Iraq or Afghanistan don't exist, in part because the Army failed until recently to give most troops hearing tests at both the beginning and end of their service, a 2005 study by the independent Institute of Medicine found. And as the American Journal of Audiology recently noted, Army Reserve and Guard members may be "underrepresented" in Army medical evaluations because "they are more likely to seek care through civilian providers."

The simplest form of hearing protection is earplugs. But according to an article in the December issue of the American Journal of Audiology by three Army scientists, "there were not adequate supplies of earplugs to fit all deploying soldiers" in the months prior to the invasion of Iraq.