In a bid to prevent millions of people damaging their hearing,
the European Commission wants personal music players to default
to a "safe" sound level and to warn users if they turn up the
volume too high. And newly published research from the US
confirms that the danger is real. The commission has asked
Cenelec, the European consumer electronics safety organisation,
to draw up a technical standard for the safety features. If
approved, it could be enforced in the European Union's 27 member
states by 2011. Last year, the EU's scientific committee on
emerging health risks said that between 5 and 10 per cent of
people who use personal music players habitually set the volume
too high, at levels the World Health Organisation says are high
enough to cause permanent damage if listened to for more than an
hour a day for five years. That is potentially 10 million
Europeans, and many more people worldwide. Turn that down "It's
easy to push up the sound levels on MP3 players to damagingly
loud levels, especially on busy