From The Register:
A 37-year-old Canadian jogger suffered "multiple injuries to his head" after ill-advisedly standing under a tree during a thunderstorm while listening to his iPod, the Vancouver Sun reports.
The unnamed victim, reportedly an active church musician and enjoying "religious music" at the time of the incident, was struck by lightning near Vancouver in June 2005. The impressive list of injuries he suffered has just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and includes burns tracing a pattern from his chest, where he was packing his iPod, to his ears - following the path of the device's earphone cables.
Just one more way that the iPod can be hazardous to your health.Medicine TagHealth Tag
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From
MSNBC:iPods can cause cardiac implantable pacemakers to malfunction by interfering with the electromagnetic equipment monitoring the heart, according to a study presented by a 17-year-old high school student to a meeting of heart specialists on Thursday.
The study tested the effect of the portable music devices on 100 patients, whose mean age was 77, outfitted with pacemakers. Electrical interference was detected half of the time when the iPod was held just 2 inches from the patient’s chest for 5 to 10 seconds.
We say: Whenever there is a new technology, there is always a concern that stuff may not play well together. With all of the electronics inside modern pacemakers, it's certainly not a great idea to have a magnetic hard drive of an iPod spinning just an inch or two away from it. I suspect, although the article doesn't state, that a flash memory based iPod would be a safer alternative, but like everything else, more research is needed.Medicine TagHealth Tag Save This Page
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