People who listen to personal music players for only five hours a week at a high volume may be doing permanent damage to their hearing.

A team of nine experts on the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks is expected to release that finding in a study Monday, according to a report in the International Herald Tribune .

The EU entity also points out that young people may be doing damage to their hearing that may not surface until years after the exposure, according to the newspaper.

The concern over hearing led a Louisiana man to file a class-action lawsuit against Apple, claiming the company had failed to take adequate steps to prevent hearing loss among iPod users. The suit, filed in 2006, charges that the iPod music player can produce sounds of up to 115 decibels even though some studies suggest that listening to music at that level for 28 seconds a day can cause damage over time.