May is National Better Hearing and Speech Month and thus a good time to sit back and listen to a few facts. About 28 million Americans have some hearing loss, and that number is expected to nearly double by the year 2030, according to the National Center on Hearing Assessment and Management. Extrapolating from the national statistics, there are about 199,000 people in Greater Cincinnati who suffer some hearing loss.

If you are an adult, hearing loss may mean you slowly lose the ability to interact with those around you. If you are 50 or older, you are three times more likely than the hearing population to suffer depression, anxiety and paranoia, according to the National Council on Aging.

Hearing loss in a child, particularly a newborn, can have a profound impact on development. If a hearing loss is undetected or untreated, a child will struggle to make basic connections with the world around him and is likely to fall one to four grades behind his peers.

Hearing testing for newborns is covered by many insurance plans, and for those who can't afford the test, help is available through agencies like the Hearing Speech & Deaf Center of Greater Cincinnati, a nonprofit organization that provides services and therapy for the hearing and speech impaired.

About 10 million older adults have a hearing loss and another 10 million young adults and working age Americans suffer some deafness. "We are finding that adults are starting to show hearing loss at an earlier age with the Baby Boom generation," said Eleanor Stromberg, director of the Hearing Speech & Deaf Center.

We live in an amplified world. It isn't just all those years of rock and roll that our parents warned us would damage our ears. It's the lawn mowers, hedge trimmers and leaf blowers, plus all of the headphones we plug in so we can hear our music over the powered roar of the modern age.

Stromberg hopes for the day when people operating machinery reach for their ear plugs as automatically as they now don a pair of safety glasses to protect their eyes. Only about 20 percent of those with hearing loss get the treatment they need. Failure to seek treatment may be because of ignorance, vanity or a stubbornness about "giving in" to a creeping infirmity. Whatever the reason, hearing loss results in a failure to communicate, which is inexcusable considering that it usually is both preventable and treatable.

To contact the Hearing Speech & Deafness Center of Greater Cincinnati go to www.hearingspeechdeaf.com or call 513/221/0527.