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A driver on the A180 was told by doctors he may have the agonising hearing condition tinnitus after commuting on the notoriously noisy road.

Naj Modak suffers from a frustrating ringing in his ears, a condition he says was diagnosed as potential Tinnitus after the A180 became his regular commute to Grimsby from Scunthorpe.

The condition is so bad he sometimes has to wear earplugs to help ease the symptoms.

Mr Modak contacted us after we highlighted the shocking levels of noise on the A180 using a sound meter.

The average decibel level for someone talking is around 60 decibels, while noises over 85 decibels can cause permanent damage to your inner ear.

Our results showed levels of 92 decibels on the roughest parts of the road - which is an equivalent noise of an alarm clock going off next to your head - and almost as loud as a passenger jet flying 1,000ft overhead.

Mr Modak said he first experienced problems on a daily commute back between 2005 and 2010 when he travelled along the A180 from Scunthorpe to Grimsby for his job in communications.

He said: "At first, it was just noisy. I did not think too much of it.

"I car shared and when we used to be in the car, we used to be shouting at each other. When we put the music on, we turned it up to listen.

"When I was by myself, I never used to have the music on. When I got out of the car at work, I felt like I had been in a nightclub," he said.

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Mr Modak said he stopped using the radio because it became "noise on top of noise".

During that time, Mr Modak said he also suffered two "blowouts" on his car on "newish tyres".

Mr Modak recalled a particularly bad experience when he was working in a library and complained that the air conditioning was too loud - only to be told it wasn't switched on.

He said: "I am not saying it was the road but it was around that time."

He told doctors about the issue and was told it could be tinnitus.

He said: "It is hard to diagnose but it is possible it could be that. They said if it gets worse, come back. Over the years, I have learnt to deal with it," he said.

Mr Modak now regularly wears earplugs and at its worst, says the noise in his ears as "like being next to a vending machine".

He no longer travels to Grimsby by car but said after the problems emerged, he changed his route so he didn't have to go on the A180.

During the experiment, while driving towards the A180, the decibel level in the car was around 72 decibels, however once the reporters got onto the road this rose to around 80 decibels as they brought their speed up to 70mph.

As most drivers on the A180 will know, the road can fluctuate between smooth portions of the road and rough ones, where the smooth portions are much quieter than the rough parts.

(Image: Jon Corken)

This was reflected in the findings as the decibel level would drop to around 75 decibels on the smoother sections and rose to 92 decibels on the roughest parts of the road.

The average decibel level while traveling along the A180 was 83 decibels, which rose to about 87 decibels whenever the window of the car was put down, and passengers in the back seat struggled to hear conversations in the front of the car for most of the journey.