system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5:Can your sense of hearing be hurt by high-frequency sounds you can't hear?

It's normally believed that humans can hear in the range of 20-20,000 Hertz. So, can they be hurt if extremely high frequencies of sound, which they can't hear, fall on their ears?
gpt
Absolutely. Sound is simply longitudinal air waves cause by the vibration of an object at a particular frequency. When we say that humans can only hear a certain range of sounds, it means that the little hairs that are connected to nerves that connect to the brain can only vibrate (and therefore interpret) those sounds. But what matters for hearing loss is the 'magnitude' of those sounds, ie their decibel value, how loud they are. A good example of this is found in case studies of people who live near wind turbines. These generate a lot of low frequency noise which is mostly inaudible, but there have been reports of hearing loss from them.