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When Christine Ingemi of Amherst learned about the harmful effects loud earphones could have on her children’s hearing, she didn’t expect to start a whole company dedicated to making them safer.

“I’ve taped the volume control,” she said of her initial efforts to control the sound going into her kids’ ears. “The iPod parental controls I’ve downloaded, the kids delete them.”

She couldn’t even find foolproof headphones that would limit the volume to a safe level and work with any device with a standard 3.5mm audio jack. So she invented some. Her iHearSafe earbuds reduce all sound going through them to no more than 80 decibels (dB).

“I never looked at this as a gadget or technical,” Ingemi said. “I looked at it as a safety product for children. It’s been well received in both areas, which is kind of more than we expected.”

In addition to exciting tech geeks, appearing on Web sites like iPod Observer and Coolest Gadgets, iHearSafe has caught the attention of companies whose employees use headphones. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration warns employers against exposing workers to noise above 85dB for prolonged periods. That’s about the volume of a motorcycle thundering by. Most portable audio players can pump music into earbuds well above that level, and listeners trying to block out external sound turn it up.

When compared to an iPod Mini’s included headphones, the iHearSafe earbuds are definitely quieter, but the sound quality isn’t noticeably different. If it weren’t for the extra plastic bulge housing the limiting electronics and sporting the iHearSafe logo, a user might never know the earbuds are anything special. And that’s the point.

“If mom can do the switcheroo, we want that to happen,” Ingemi said. “The kid has no clue what just happened.” Their ears are protected and they don’t even know how uncool they’re being.

“I wanted the headphones because I felt it was safer than the earbuds, but on a business end of things, what is going to reach the kids that they’ll use?” she said. After doing a survey, Ingemi discovered that earbuds are preferred for their portability and inconspicuousness. She does plan to release what she called a “street style” model later on, with speakers that aren’t inserted into the ear and a band wrapping around the back of the head.

“Our theme from the very beginning has been the bicycle helmet theory,” Ingemi said. “You catch the kids when they’re very young. We’re not going to hit the 15-year-olds. It’s too late. They don’t care. They’ve already heard it loud, they like it loud, they want it loud. We’re going for the young kids so that when they start off, this is the level they’re used to hearing and they train the ear to hear at that level. Anything louder is too loud to them.”

Three of Ingemi’s four children have their own iPods and are featured on www.ingemicorp.com, the Web site at which you can pre-order iHearSafe earbuds. The fourth, just four years old, listens along with one of the other kids.

Ingemi isn’t a sound engineer; her experience is in sales and distribution. She consulted with audiologists when deveolping iHearSafe earbuds and got feedback recently at the Noise-Induced Hearing Loss in Children at Work and Play conference in Covington, Ky. She’s working with a manufacturer now and hopes to have the first generation of earbuds out in time for Christmas.