Association of residential altitude with pure-tone hearing thresholds in plateau residents aged ≤50 years: a cross-sectional study
Qingping Zhang, Guoqiang Jia, Shanhong Li, Haiyan Liu, Yulin Ma, Wenqi Du, Juan Ye, Ying Zhang, Tana Wuren, Yi Wang, Bin Guo · 2026
Read Association of residential altitude with pure-tone hearing thresholds in plateau residents aged ≤50 years: a cross-sectional study by Qingping Zhang, Guoqiang Jia, Shanhong Li, Haiyan Liu, Yulin Ma, Wenqi Du, Juan Ye, Ying Zhang, Tana Wuren, Yi Wang, Bin Guo (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13314425.txt.
Description
Qingping Zhang leads a 2026 study of whether living high on a plateau dulls hearing. Long-term life at altitude has been floated as a factor in hearing, but proof from people who live high for years was limited.
The study drew 187 plateau residents aged 50 years or less at a Qinghai hospital health check. They were split by home altitude into three groups. The low group held 79 people at 2200 to 2499 meters. The middle group held 51 at 2500 to 3499 meters, and the high group held 57 at 3500 meters or more, by the report counts. Hearing was tested at six tones from 250 Hz to 8 kHz in both ears, with averages for low and high tones too. Early results showed the clearest group gaps at the high tones. The work weighs altitude as a quiet risk for the ears of plateau peoples.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Qingping Zhang, Guoqiang Jia, Shanhong Li, Haiyan Liu, Yulin Ma, Wenqi Du, Juan Ye, Ying Zhang, Tana Wuren, Yi Wang, Bin Guo |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 43943 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |