Your Choices in Hearing Aid Batteries
An essential component of a hearing aid is the hearing aid batteries. None of the electronic parts will work without being powered by the battery. In fact, they’re so important that a lot of people who wear a hearing aid keep a hearing aid battery tester handy. 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. The reason is that these are smaller batteries and don’t have as much of the power producing components.
The older, more traditional kind of hearing aids utilized mercury batteries to keep them going. These batteries are much less effective than the newer zinc batteries that are popular these days.
Zinc batteries utilize zinc air. This is a combination of the zinc contained inside the battery along with oxygen present outside the battery. This produces a reaction that powers the battery. They last approximately twice as long as the old mercury batteries.
Zinc hearing aid batteries come with a color coded tab on them. 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.
Once the tab is removed, the oxygen in the air is allowed into 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 largest size is 675 and is labeled in blue. The small sizes are most commonly used for the smaller digital hearing aids that go into the ear canal. The behind the ear devices will use the larger sized batteries. You can buy hearing aid batteries just about anywhere where they sell hearing aids online.
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.
Tags: nutrition, exercise, Health
