MemberIt's unproven, so it's difficult to say. However, I don't think everyday sounds are a huge physical threat that's worth unnecessarily worrying over. The free radicals in our bloodstream are more damaging, but they are more of a hidden entity, so we don't really stress about them (no obvious trigger to concern us).
Free radical damage is unavoidable and consistent across all cells in our body. They put our cells under oxidative stress, which is why antioxidants such as NAC, and vitamins C and E, etc, are so popular. The mechanisms in which they are created is as varied as: the foods we eat; the air we breathe; the drugs we take; the radiation our skin is exposed to; along with the amount of loud noise exposure our ears are subjected to.
Our cells divide throughout our lifetime, making near identical copies each time they split. This process is known as mitosis, but there is a limit to how long this process can go on for. Once our cells reach their final days, a chemical message is released starting a process called apoptosis, whereby the cell is instructed to effectively commit suicide.
So, even if we were to stay in complete silence our entire lives, our cells would still be under oxidative stress. I think it's a much better approach to protect our ears when we're exposed to loud noise, rather than all the time, around negligible noise here and there. The behavioural aspect of overprotection is just as damaging, psychologically.
