How do loud sounds harm human ears?
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Your ears are made of three parts:
The outer ear has the ear drum, which is a thin membrane that vibrates when sound hits it,
The middle ear which is a group of three tiny bones connected to the ear drum that vibrate when it does,
And the inner ear which is a sort of snail shell shaped channel full of fluid and little hairs, the inner ear is connected to those tiny bones.
When you hear a sound, the vibrations go through the ear drum, to the little bones, to the fluid in your inner ear, as the fluid in your inner ear moves around it moves little hairs in there, your body sends the movement of those hairs to your brain as a signal to represent the sounds.
Really loud sounds can send enough force through your ears that the fluid going through the inner ear moves around so fast, that it rips out some of the tiny hairs, as the hairs get ripped out you lose some of Your hearing ability.
That’s your usual form of hearing loss from excessive sounds, the more often, and longer you’re exposed to loud sounds the more hairs rip out and the worse your hearing gets.
The other case you can have is if a sounds is really, really, loud the force of the vibration can actual tear, or rupture your eardrum, this causes sudden extreme pain and total hearing loss.
In your ear you have something called a Cochlear in which you have tiny hairs that vibrate to sounds and then the Cochlear converts that sound into electricity, so that it’s understood by the brain.
If you listen to loud noises for too long, the hairs can bend too far and essentially stay like that forever.
You can find charts online that show how long you can listen to certain decibels of sound before hearing damage occurs. For instance you can listen to 80 decibels for 2 hours before damage to hearing occurs, but at 95 decibels it only takes an hour.
https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/hearing_loss/what_noises_cause_hearing_loss.html
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