Deafman

BOSTON--These portable radios with featherweight headphones so favored by joggers, assembly workers and kids everywhere can came hearing loss if people keep the volume lurned up too high, doctors warn.

People listening to the miniature radios for several hours at a time should keep the volume below level they say. And the gadgets should never he larned up to eight or above.

"Little kids are running around with those things on," Dr. Arnold E. Katz of Tufts-New England Medical center in Boston said in an interview. "With the consitant exposure of the loud intensity, you've really got a had thing going on."

In a letter published in Today's New England Journal of Medicine. Kats and his colleagues warn. "Then can he an doubt that these units have the potential for inducing a permanent bilateral sensorineural hearing loss--expecially it they are used at a volume setting of four of above for extended period."