Listening to your iPod can expose you to deadly bacteria
Listening to your iPod could give you earache, scientists have warned.
The Daily Mail reports that people who regularly enjoy music through headphones have thousands of times more bacteria in their ears than others. Although the bugs are usually harmless, some, such as Staphylococcus, can cause a range of ills, from earache to potentially deadly wound infections.
Researchers say that plugging the ears with headphones allows bugs to thrive - and urge music lovers to think twice before sharing their earphones with others.
The Indian researchers scrutinised the ears and earphones of 50 young men. Half regularly listened to music on an MP3 player, the others tuned in now and again.
After the students had listened to music, their ears and earphones were swabbed for bugs and the samples were incubated overnight.
Some of the samples from the regular earphone users had thousands of times more bugs than those from the infrequent listeners, the Online Journal of Health and Allied Sciences reports.
It is thought that the frequent use of earphones makes it easier for bugs to breed. Plugging the ear makes it warmer and moister and raises the risk of cuts and grazes that bugs can use to work their way further into the body.
The common practice of sharing earphones is likely to make matters worse, said the researchers from Kasturba Medical College in Manipal, south-west India. 'It can be concluded that bacterial transfer does increase with frequent and continuous use and the chance of it being transferred is high while people tend to share earphones while listening to music,' they said.
'It is suggested therefore not to share earphones or to share with caution, cleaning it before giving it to or taking it from someone else."
They added that the advice also applies to plane passengers using airline-supplied headphones and may also be of relevance to hospital patients.
The study is not the first to conclude that iPods and MP3 players can damage health. Headphones may transfer head lice, studies have shown, while it is feared more than a million Britons could go deaf because they listen to their music too loudly and for too long. (Read more here).
As featured in the Daily Mail.
