It’s not there in the Apple iPod instructions, and it’s rarely listed with other iPod info, but here is one of the most important iPod tips you’ll ever get: don’t use your iPod during lightning storms, because if lightning strikes, it can conduct the charge through the earphones, across your chest, and into your head! Put another way, when it comes to lightning safety, don’t use your iPod during lightning storms!
Unfortunately, that’s just what happened to a Canadian jogger who recently made the news when his lightning strike while listening to his iPod was written up in the New England Journal of Medicine. The jogger was burned across his chest, his eardrums were ruptured, and his jaw broken. The incident occurred nearly two years ago, but was only just written up.
More recently, however, a young man in Colorado was struck by lightning while listening to his iPod, and also suffered severe hearing loss as a result, also having his eardrums ruptured by the lightning traveling up the iPod headset to his hears. Two surgeries later, he still is hearing impaired.
Now, it’s important to understand that having the iPod isn’t causing the lightning to strike, but it is conducting the electricity into the device, and up the headset wires into the ears and head.
While some iPod packaging cautions against listening to the iPod in the rain, it doesn’t spell out that there is a danger of lightning traveling up into your head.
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Explained emergency room physician Dr. Mary Ann Cooper, “It’s going to hit where it’s going to hit, but once it contacts metal, the metal conducts the electricity.”
Regardless of whether you are wearing an iPod or not, current lightning safety wisdom says to get inside the moment you hear thunder or, as they say, “When thunder roars go indoors.”
You can read a lot more about lightning safety at http://www.StruckByLightning.org/
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