Between 1990 and 2010, no less than 260,000 minors were injured because of a cotton swab in the United States! This chilling number is the result of a study conducted by the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System. And even if this little tool may seem essential for the hygiene of your offspring, it sends an average of 34 children to the emergency room every day. In France, swab-related problems “are frequent incidents in ENT practice,” says the ENT department at St Joseph Hospital in Paris.
In 1924, while watching his wife clean their son's ears with a toothpick and cotton, Leo Gerstenzang thought of a small object that made it easy to clean the ears:the birth of the cotton swab! And the brave man would probably never have imagined that almost a century later, the effectiveness of his invention would be challenged! Unfortunately, the risks run by the cotton swab are now well known:in addition to earwax plugs (which the cotton swab only pushes back and not removes), it can lead to infections of the external auditory canal and even a perforation of the eardrums (in the most serious cases…).
No panic, however, these dangers are not inevitable. We often tend to think that we should clean our ears regularly and with nothing but cotton swabs. It's wrong ! The presence of earwax in the ears is completely normal. When there are too many, there are sprays that help remove the clogs. Another idea received, hygiene. Well no, using cotton swabs doesn't make us clean people. On the contrary. To recap, cotton swabs are useful for cleaning the outside of the ear, but everything inside must be evacuated using a suitable product (available in pharmacies or parapharmacies, for example). Regarding the frequency, once a week seems to be a good number. Beyond that, the risk of irritating the canal and causing infection or overproduction of earwax is greater.
Rest assured, accidents related to cotton swabs should drastically decrease in the coming years. Indeed, from 2020, plastic ones will be totally banned in France. A good thing both for the environment and for the eardrums of our children (and ours at the same time…).
