Your Choices in Hearing Aid Batteries
<< What are Your Options in a Hearing Aid? Living Tinnitus Free Review >>An essential component of a hearing aid is the hearing aid batteries. Without power from the battery, the whole device is essentially useless. They’re so essential that many individuals who have a hearing aid will also buy a hearing aid battery tester. It makes it easy to know when the battery is running low on power. Then they will know to have other batteries on hand to replace it.
The length of time that hearing aid batteries will last depends on the style of hearing aid being worn. The smaller hearing aids that fit into the ear canal have a shorter battery life. That’s because the batteries are smaller and contain less of the substances required to produce power.
The older, more traditional kind of hearing aids utilized mercury batteries to keep them going. But there are newer zinc batteries that are much more effective and therefore more commonly used.
Zinc batteries utilize zinc air. This is a mixture of oxygen in the air along with the zinc present inside the battery. The resulting reaction gives power to the battery. They have about twice the life of the conventional mercury batteries.
You’ll find that zinc hearing aid batteries have a color coded tab. One of the reasons for this is so you can know the size of the battery. But it also keeps the air out of the battery until it is time to use it.
As soon as the tab is pulled off, oxygen starts to enter the battery. The battery will activate once the zinc and oxygen combine. For this reason the tab should not be removed until you’re ready to use it so it doesn’t start losing power.
Most hearing aids today use one of four different sizes of batteries that are readily available. Every size of hearing aid has a certain size of battery that fits it. The smallest size is color coded with yellow and is labeled a ten. The blue labels indicate the largest size available, which is 675. Digital hearing aids that fit inside the ear canal typically use the smaller sizes. The large sizes are used for the behind the ear hearing aids.
The larger sizes are longer lasting since there is room to hold more zinc inside the battery. But they do take up a lot more space. Many people would rather change the battery more often and have a less noticeable hearing aid.
August 01 2009 01:07 am | Ears Hearing