Upholding an earlier decision by a California district court, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth District ruled on Wednesday that Apple’s iPod music players do not pose any undesirable risk to the hearing ability of the users.

The class-action lawsuit, which claimed that the 115-decibels sound production of the iPod was damaging for the users’ hearing, was filed in January 2006, in the U. S. District Court of Northern California, on behalf of John Kiel Patterson of Baton Rouge, La., and was later amended with the inclusion of two class representatives – Louisiana’s Joseph Birdsong, and California’s Bruce Waggoner.

Though the lawsuit contended that exposure to 115 decibels can cause “permanent damage” over time, the district court has ruled that any risk of hearing loss from playing music too loud were “obvious” and “unavoidable.”

Reiterating the district court’s arguments, Senior Circuit Judge David Thompson said: “The district court did not err. The plaintiffs admit that the iPod has an ‘ordinary purpose of listening to music,’ and nothing they allege suggests iPods are unsafe for that use or defective.”

The 3-0 decision of the Appeals Court to uphold the lower court’s ruling has left the responsibility of using the iPods properly entirely on the users, with the court statement saying that “users have the option of using an iPod in a risky manner, not that the product lacks any minimum level of quality.”