(Amy King / The Washington Post; iStock)
A few years ago, my mother complained of a terrible earache. The pain was unbearable. And do not go - for a week, she was walking with a debilitating ringing in the head.
Finally, she reminded me the other day, Complaints took her to a doctor who has carefully pushed an otoscope in his ear. Secondly, he went out and looked into his face.
"Been to Q-Tips into your ears?" he asked in a tone of disapproval.
Like many others, had my mother swabs are used to clean the ears. But that's it played well with a natural process. His ear was ill because I had an ear infection, and there is a good chance your routine with cotton swabs had helped the cause.
"Promise me something," said the doctor. "Promise me, another cotton swab in the ear never sets."
Q-tips are one of the most embarrassing things for sale in the USA. Many consumer products are widely used in a variety of ways to use their basic function - to level the tables of books, newspapers, to keep the fire burning, seltzer water to remove stains, coffee tables, rest your legs - but these concessions are different. Q-tips are one of the few consumer products, if the only one whose main aim is not exactly what the manufacturer expressly warned.
Small padded suits have long been marketed as brackets on the market, established for different types of beauty products, arts and crafts, house cleaning and baby care. And for years, they led an explicit warning - Q-Tips Each box comes with this warning: "Do not bring into the ear canal." But everyone - especially those who are looking into the ears of the people for a living - knowing that many, if not most, are unaware flat warning.
"People come with all cotton swab problems in time," said Dennis Fitzgerald, an otolaryngologist in Washington, DC. "Every ear, nose and throat in the world will tell you they see them all the time."
"People say that only be used to set up, but we know what else to use even for them," he added. "You have in your ears."
Although Q-tips were never heard driven lower on the application, it took about half a century, the producers are explicitly warns.
The basic small in the versatile home was the fruit of a man named Leo Gerstenzang, who firmly believe, cotton wrap around a stick after his wife Preen your toddler. She used a stick with a cotton ball in the end gently apply some things for the baby, the top, but slightly improved.
In 1923 introduced gay Gerstenzang disinfected the first baby cotton swab. They were similar to those sold today, except for some major differences. They were made of wood instead of plastic or paper; that were simple, no two faces; they were intended to be used for baby care, rather than everything under the sun; and above all, do not be discouraged in the ears.
"Every mother will be pleased to know about the Q-tips Gay Baby (Q stands for" quality "), swab boric health of the eyes, nose, ears, gums and many other applications," read a printed ad 1927th
In the following years a lot has changed, including the name, which has been only Q-tips reduced; Material, whereby the paper; and marketing, which has been expanded to include all kinds of other household applications. But one thing has not: the lack of a warning.
It was not until sometime in the 1970s that the boxes began to warn against the things of the friction in the ears. A box vintage since shortly after the new labeling practice (for buying on Ebay available) says: "Adult Ear Care" on the front.
(Source: Ebay / vintagecollectibles414)
But the box also contains instructions on the back of discouraging use in the ear canal.
Today, warnings are even clearer. Instead, they say clearly: "Have swab into the ear canal to introduce."
(Photo: Roberto A. Ferdman)
What the change will be asked exactly this is difficult. No trace of a published case at the time, in which a Q-tip was for the damage to the ears of no one to blame. Unilever, which now owns the brand, do not write the change to something specific.
"The brand has been around for nearly 100 years, and so there were a few iterations in the packaging," said Carolyn Stanton, a company spokesman. "Early boxes were destined for baby care, if it is not relevant at the moment."
But the switch for him, at least in part on the knowledge that many people abuse the swab. The first boxes are designed to care for the baby, but for decades, the product also has many other duties - also as a tool for ear cleaning for adults.
"Dad found the drier" ideal "for the water in the ear", played an ad in the mid-1900s.
Was added despite the warning label on the package, Q-tips yet - as it did for decades - marketed as a tool for ear cleaning.
In 1980, an ad for the brand pre-Betty White, who encourages people to use on the eyebrows, lips and ears. "This is a cotton swab Q-tips," she said. "They call safe swabs."
An independent TV display, upholstered with inspirational music and nice animation shows a child with cotton swab in the ear of a dog, then a nut for use in the ear of an infant.
In 1990, an article in the Washington Post said in jest, to tell people about pills, "the outer surfaces of the ear without the ear canal," as Q-Tips are packages was similar to ask smokers throw their cigarette lips never lights.
Cigarette analogy is apt. We will continue to adapt our Q-Tips Ears with a simple truth: It feels good. Our ears are full of sensitive nerve endings to send signals to other parts of our body. Tickling her inner guts solves all kinds of fun.
But there's more. . Using Q-tips led to what dermatologists call the itch-scratch cycle, an addiction to self-perpetuation of all kinds The more you use, the higher your ears are itchy; and your ears itch, and do not use.
Fitzgerald, ear, nose, he said like the analogy of smoking, however, insists that it will keep nothing funny about the temptation cotton swab in the ear. At the core of the problem is a fundamental misunderstanding Fitzgerald believes that the manufacturers have helped to spread, even inadvertently, to speak to the ads on their use in the cleaning of the ear.
"People have to believe that it is normal for cleaning ears - who think that earwax is dirty, coarse or useless," he said "But all this is not true.".
Fitzgerald cerumen as compared to tears lubricate, and help to protect our eyes. Cera says, is somewhat similar to the ear canal, where the skin is thin and fragile and very susceptible to infection.
"Your body produces [wax] to protect the ear canal," Fitzgerald said. "What you should eat to be there. There is a natural migration bringing the wax, if left alone."
Even if our ears were clean, the truth is that Q-tips to know how to use a terrible thing, he said. The shape, size and texture of cotton pads is such that insertion into the ear tends to wax on the eardrum inward instead advertises push out.
"Wax Pushing, Q-tips, as they tend to do this can be to result in hearing loss," Fitzgerald said. "You can also insert too deep and ruptured eardrum or damage the small bones of the middle ear, occurring much more than you think."
For this reason, cotton swabs American Academy of Otolaryngology as "harmful interference or" even if the wax must be removed from the power ears listed in their guidelines of 2008.
It is surprisingly difficult to understand how often people hurt put Q-Tips into your ears every year.
The Committee on the safety of consumer products after connected with all kinds of household items, including batting injuries. But he did, for some strange reason, follow those associated with cotton swabs.
It is under screen capture new report by the CPSC (number codes of the elements, not tolls on injury). In addition to cotton swabs, he said, "not to inform."
(Source: 2016 CPSC)
Swabs, a representative of the CPSC said in my email, "are not in the jurisdiction of the CPSC because they as a medical device." Medical equipment, he said, will be monitored by the Food and Drug Administration.
On the website of the FDA, he said only the swabs are as medical devices because they classified "are used to apply drugs or the taking of samples of a patient." But he also said the same for batting.
Neither the FDA nor the CPSC could be why the monitoring committee associated with cotton injuries, but to explain any cotton swab. CPSC suggests reach the FDA. The FDA suggests reach the CPSC. Ultimately, no one had an answer.
But the difference has significant implications: That is, it is much more difficult to quantify the number of associated Q-tips that injuries occur every year in the United States. The FDA is the local complaints on its website, but do not add it.
"It would be tedious to figure out how many injuries with cotton swabs were reported each year associated," said Deborah Kotz, a spokesman for the FDA.
Kotz recommended that the database of the agency reported, had suffered several cases of people who injuries after using cotton swabs in their ears and bothered by a report was presented. In one case, one patient had a complaint after cleaning the ears "for the first time recommended by a friend." In another, complained a consumer, that the cotton is separated from the bar.
But doctors have no official database that swabs are a problem.
"Everyone gets into the ear, but no one should", Fitzgerald said the Ent. "This is one of the most common ear problems taxpayers."
A 2011 study by the Henry Ford Hospital has found a direct link between the use of cotton swabs in the ears and ruptured eardrums. He also noted that "regardless of their main complaint, admit more than half of the patients (ear, nose and throat) are treated in clinical ENT to clean with cotton swab ears."
Fitzgerald, who said you can tell right away if someone Q-Tips used, complained that the warnings not.
"I can not tell you how many times I have someone I put them never told in her ears, and they said they had no idea," he said.
Today not a single word in the official website of Q-tips. There's a woman to apply the make-up of lips, another use for nail polish, a dog, a baby with a cotton swab, and a clean room with gas, amongst other things.
The variety reflects the business strategy of Q-Tips, driven increasingly by the desire to broaden the appeal of the product.
Purpose "Marketing will be expanded" "be used by the end of 1990 and 2000", Svetlana Uduslivaia said, which is the head of the Tissue and Hygiene in Euro Monitor, a market research firm market. The Company estimates that $ 208.4 million in sales Q-Tips in the US in 2014, to $ 189.3 million in the year of 2005.
"People can use [Q-Tips] to ear cleaning, but instruct us against them," Stanton said Unilever.
The problem of course is that people are doing. , Change Barbara Kahn, professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business, which is particularly difficult, the way people perceive Q-tips as they are of this historical brand.
"They are trying to change the mindset of the product in order to build a brand that is not attached, regardless of the original, but what is really difficult when everyone knows the product and think, somehow," he said. "When people say to use other to cotton swabs in the ears, if this message is getting through viral videos or other media, or simply to travel from client to client, which is a very powerful thing, you can not control."
He added: "There is really no way short of taking the product from the market, which obviously do not to stop."
Fitzgerald agrees.
"If you was doing, would not be in the market," he said. "When I treat people with recurrent ear problems, I promise that they will throw their Q-tips and never to buy again. Those who are still back to infection those who do not listen."
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is to read your content and on the website of another person, please read the FAQ on fivefilters.org/content-only/faq .php # publishers.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire