Saying that something offers hearing protection is a claim that it has been tested and shown to be effective at protecting the user's ears. Most earbud/headphone makers won't make such a claim because testing is expensive and anyway, that's not what the product is for. It's for listening to media. What is to prevent a user from cranking the music volume up too loud, damaging their hearing, and suing the device manufacturer because they claimed it was hearing "protection"?

Active noise cancelling headphones do not filter out all sounds. In fact, many loud tools are not going to be affected at all.

And there in lies the crux of the matter. Active noise cancelling doesn't stop all noise. They also have limits in terms of how much sound and what types of sound they can cancel out.

It is hard to make a claim that they protect your hearing when they don't protect your hearing consistently.

Noise cancelling headphones work by playing the exact opposite sound wave, to cancel it out to nothing. This means that they can only cancel sounds that are as loud as the loudest sound they can play, anything louder they won't be able to cancel out fully. And because they don't want to get sued / fined for playing noise at ear-damaging levels, they cannot cancel out noises that are ear-damagingly loud. They can help a bit, because they do cover your ears and hence dull the sound a little, but they cannot substitute proper ear protection.

A few reasons, 2 really noticeable ones. The first and most important is that in order to make that claim you need to prove it under scientific conditions and testing, which is expensive and time consuming. Product manufacture don't want to waste money on that if it's not their intended goal, especially considering most headphone companies put out new products regularly, and each one would need to undergo that testing.

Another important thing is that active noise canceling works not by blocking sound but by creating sound waves that destructive interfere with the outside sound waves. This means they (in theory) should be emitting sound waves of the same amplitude and frequency just 180° out of phase of the incoming sound to be blocked. While this would technically make the sound dampened, it is a much greater risk to the user because suddenly you have 2 loud sound waves being directed at your ear, and if the active noise dampening fails for some reason, suddenly they're not working to protect your hearing at all. This is why passive hearing protection is much safer than active. Passive is usually when a material just blocks the sound from reaching your ear at all.

It is, the just don't advertise them as such because that's not the target market they are going after.

Search for 'active hearing protection' and you'll find basically the same devices but for a different market.

https://www.amazon.com/active-hearing-protection/s?k=active+hearing+protection

Don't know what everyone is saying here because ANC was actually developed for the aviation industry specifically to protect pilots' hearing. The ones that are commercially available just aren't good enough to be protective to that degree. A good pair will be expensive and work well to block out noises and reduce the exterior loudness.

Noise canceling headphones does have limits to what they can cancel out. The speakers and amplifiers in them have a maximum strength and the software and microphones have issues with some sounds. The noise canceling feature might even do some loud sounds worse. The background noise you hear when walking in public is usually low enough not to cause any sort of issues. The sounds which do cause damage to your hearing tends to overload the noise canceling features anyway.

ANC headphones may not be rigorously tested for hearing loss protection, but the perceived reduction in volume is real. As in, if it feels quieter for your ears, then you are protecting your ears from those sounds. As others have said, large transient sounds will not be cancelled as much, and you will certainly hear those as louder, and even possibly too loud.

I think the misconception might be based on knowing that ANC headphones use an equal but opposite sound to cancel the incoming sound. So twice the sound going into your ear must not be healthy. But the air pressure does cancel prior to reaching your eardrum. If you can't hear it, it's not hurting your ears, (mostly).

Hearing protection actually blocks out sound pressure (which causes direct physical damage to some parts of the inner ear).

Noise-cancelling doesn't do that. Noise cancellation technology makes noise of its own, designed to create an interference patter with sounds you hear so that they don't register as noise.

So... if you're going to be in an industrial or other loud environment (concert, shooting range, trainyard, etc) where you're exposed to problematic decibel levels, choose actual hearing protection, not noise-cancelling tech.

The same reason a hat doesn't protect your head in a motorcycle accident. That's not the intent of the design. You need a helmet.

If you want to protect your hearing, you need physical cups that go over your ears and actually BLOCKS the sound waves. Noise cancelation can be added on top of it for a better experience. But it isn't going to do the job by itself. Noise cancelation isn't a force field.

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They actually can protect your hearing, but only in certain situations, and not in others.

They work by producing sound waves that “cancel out” or destructively interfere with the sound from outside. This is very good for steady background noises like a lawnmower or airplane. But really bad for changing or sudden noises like a gunshot loud concert. In the later scenarios the sound generated to cancel out the outside noise is on a slight delay so it might be too late and it might not be able to fully cancel the outside sound.

NC make opposing soundwaves but don't physically block noises. Fast cars, trash trucks make vibration I can feel when they pass. I'd need to physically block (earplugs) to reduce, measured in db on the package.