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…..that you are not supposed to put Q-tips in your ears?

The very thing that most people buy and use Q-tips for, is exactly what the manufacturer expressly says you should NOT do with them….stick them in your ears.

I remember my brother telling me that once, not all that many years ago. And all I said was “whaaaaaat?” I’m not a daily sticker-in-the-ear, but the other half certainly is. Or was anyway, until we learned this earth shattering fact.

The following is more than you probably ever wanted to know about Q-tips, and is largely composed of plagiarized excerpts from the (linked below) article in the Washington Post.

The strange life of Q-tips, the most bizarre thing people buy

Doctors tell us now, that sticking Q-tips in our ears to clean them, is a bad idea and that, in doing so, we are messing with a natural process. The routine use of Q-tips to clean one’s ears can lead to ear infections.

This really does, to me, make Q-tips sort of perplexing.  Q-tips are one of the only, if not the only, major consumer products whose main purpose is precisely the one the manufacturer explicitly warns us against using them for. The little padded sticks are marketed as household staples, advertised for use for various kinds of things ranging from a beauty tool to arts and crafts, home-cleaning, and baby care. And, for a very long time, they have also apparently also sported an explicit caution — every box of Q-tips comes with this caveat: “Do not insert inside the ear canal.”

But everyone — especially those who look into people’s ears for a living — know that many, if not most, flat out ignore the warning.

No one told us not to.

While Q-tips were never sold for use deep inside the ear, it took around half a century for manufacturers to explicitly warn against it.

Apparently the things were the brainchild of a fellow named Leo Gerstenzang, who invented them by wrapping cotton tightly around a stick after watching his wife using a toothpick with a cotton ball on the end to carefully apply various things to the baby. In 1923, Gerstenzang introduced his new product, the first sanitized cotton swabs. They were similar to the ones we use today except for a few key differences. They were made of wood, instead of plastic or paper; they were single-, not double-sided; they were meant to be used for baby care, rather than everything under the sun; and, most importantly, they didn’t discourage putting them inside of ears.

It wasn’t until sometime in the 1970s that boxes began to caution against sticking the things inside of ears; advising against using them inside of the ear canal. Today, the warnings are even more explicit. They say, rather unambiguously, “Do not insert swab into ear canal.”

What exactly prompted the change is unclear. There is no record of a publicized case around that time in which a Q-tip was blamed for damage to someone’s ears. Nor does Unilever, which now owns the brand, attribute the shift to anything in particular.

“The brand has been around nearly 100 years so there’s been a few iterations in packaging,” said Carolyn Stanton, a company spokeswoman. “The earlier boxes were intended for baby care so it wasn’t relevant at the time.” But the impetus for the switch must have come, at least in part, from an understanding that many people were misusing the cotton swabs.

The earliest boxes were intended for baby care, but for decades the product was also pitched for many other tasks — including as an ear-cleaning tool for adults.

“Dad has found the ‘ideal’ blotter for water in the ear,” said an ad from the mid-1900s. Despite the cautionary label that was added to packaging, Q-tips were still — as they had been for decades — marketed as a tool for ear cleaning.

In 1980, a commercial for the brand featured Betty White, who encouraged people to use them on eyebrows, lips, and ears. “This is a Q-tips cotton swab,” she said. “They call it safe swab.” A separate TV spot, cushioned with uplifting music and cute animation, shows a child using the cotton swabs on a dog’s ear, and then a mother using them on a baby’s ear.

In 1990, a piece published in The Washington Post joked that telling people to use the swabs on “the outer surfaces of the ear without entering the ear canal,” as Q-tips packages do, was akin to asking smokers to dangle cigarettes from their lips without ever lighting them. …the twisted pleasure of cleaning your ears.

The cigarette analogy is an apt one. We continue to twist Q-tips in our ears thanks to a simple truth: It feels great. Our ears are filled with sensitive nerve endings, which send signals to various other parts of our bodies. Tickling their insides triggers all sorts of visceral pleasure.

But there’s more. Using Q-tips leads to what dermatologists refer to as the itch-scratch cycle, a self-perpetuating addiction of sorts. The more you use them, the more your ears itch; and the more your ears itch, the more you use them.

Fitzgerald, the otolaryngologist, said he appreciates the cigarette analogy but insists there’s nothing funny about the temptation to stick cotton swabs into your ears. At the heart of the problem is a fundamental misunderstanding Fitzgerald believes manufacturers have helped propagate, even if unintentionally, by talking in advertisements about their use in ear cleaning. “People have been led to think that it’s normal to clean their ears — they think that ear wax is dirty, that it’s gross or unnecessary,” he said. “But that’s not true at all.” Fitzgerald likens ear wax to tears, which help lubricate and protect our eyeballs. Wax, he says, does something similar for the ear canal, where the skin is thin and fragile and highly susceptible to infection. “Your body produces it [ear wax] to protect the ear canal,” Fitzgerald said. “What you’re taking out is supposed to be in there. There’s a natural migration that carries the wax out when left alone.”

Even if our ears were meant to be cleaned, the truth is that Q-tips would still be a terrible thing to use, he says. The shape, size, and texture of cotton swabs is such that inserting them into your ears tends to push wax inward, toward your ear drum, rather than woo it out. “Pushing wax in, as Q-tips tend to do, can induce hearing loss,” said Fitzgerald. “They can also be inserted too deeply and rupture the ear drum or damage the small middle ear bones, both of which happen more than you would think.”

For this reason, the American Academy of Otolaryngology listed cotton swabs as an “inappropriate or harmful intervention,” even when earwax needs to be forcibly removed from the ear, in its 2008 guidelines.

It’s surprisingly hard to figure out how often people hurt themselves by putting Q-tips in their ears each year. The Consumer Product Safety Commission tracks injuries associated with all sorts of household goods, including cotton balls. But it doesn’t, for reasons unclear, track those associated with cotton swabs. But doctors don’t need an official database to know that cotton swabs are a problem. “Everyone puts them inside their ears, but no one should,” said Fitzgerald, the otolaryngologist. “They’re one of most common contributors to ear problems.”

A 2011 study by Henry Ford Hospital found a direct association between the use of cotton swabs inside ears and ruptured ear drums. It also noted that “more than half of patients seen in otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat) clinics, regardless of their primary complaint, admit to using cotton swabs to clean their ears.” Fitzgerald, who said he can immediately tell when someone has been using Q-tips, lamented that the warnings aren’t working. “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve told someone to never put them in their ears and then been told that they had no idea,” he said.

Q-tips are here to stay and we will probably continue to stick them in our ears, even though we know we ought not to.

Did you know?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/20/we-have-a-q-tips-problem/

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