Since Every Living Creature On The Planet Will Soon Own The Ubiquitous Device, These Warnings Apply To Us All
The ever-popular mp3 player, Apple iPod, is now coming with some warning labels after a number of happy owners suffered extensive burns and damaged eardrums after lightning struck nearby while wearing the device.
One jogger was treated after lightning struck a nearby tree while he was jogging past, listening to his favorite jams. He was thrown about 6 feet from the tree, but it was the iPod's headphones that appeared to do the most damage.
The electric shock from the lightning strike left second-degree burns on his chest, neck and ears, while the surge through the headphone ear buds ruptured his eardrums and harmed his hearing. His jawbone was also broken as a result of clenching his jaw muscles.
Just last year, an 18 year-old boy was knocked unconscious when lightning struck nearby while simultaneously mowing his lawn and listening to his iPod. Every place on the boy's body where the iPod touched him was burned. The cables that laid on his face left burns there, along with singes to his hip where the actual mp3 player sat in his pocket, and his ruptured eardrums went through rounds of surgery in hopes of repairing them.
While this devastating phenomenon needs to be addressed, maybe the countless victims should have paid attention in 1st grade, when we all learned that lightning is a discharge of electricity that occurs mostly during thunderstorms.
If you’re unlucky enough to be caught out in a storm, its always been told to us that it’s a good idea to stay away from conductors that enhance a lightning strike, like, say, electrical devices.
Do doctors also have to remind us that you shouldn’t dance in the largest puddle you can find when you see lightning making its way to earth?In case we have gotten too advanced for our own good, let’s remember that while iPods are time-saving, easy to carry, and incredibly advanced technologically, they are still electrical devices.
Although they don’t necessarily attract the devastating lightning burns to the victims, they definitely increase the damage due to the headphones of an iPod acting as a conductor, directing a bolt of electricity straight inside the listener's ear.
In light of how long it’s been since we first learned this, we will review. Don’t light a cigarette while pumping gas at a gas station, don’t stick your tongue on a frozen pole, don’t haphazardly grab broken glass, don’t stare directly into the sun, and don’t touch a hot stove, it will burn you.
Class dismissed!
Keep talking, it’s the only way they’ll ever hear you.--JJJ