Interesting-- I'd love to read that study! I wonder how this relates to the fact that men historically experience age-related hearing loss more (or earlier) than women.
My dad has pretty serious hearing loss at 66. He was always working on loud race cars in closed garages, cutting down trees with chainsaws, banging hammers on stuff, etc. My mother's hearing is near perfect at 64. She spent most of her time in church!
It makes one wonder whether the historical gender-related patterns of hearing loss have a social component as well as a physiological one, and whether in future generations (as gender roles become less restrictive and neatly-defined) we will begin to see a leveling-out of age-related hearing loss among the genders?