Aside from cotton swabs, doctors have seen people clean their ears with hairpins, tweezers, pens, and even straws. But none of these tools work, and cotton swabs, in particular, can cause more harm than good. They might make you feel good and clean, but it’s not true. If you stick around, you’ll see how bad they can be for your ears.
CuriousMob.com would like to tell you how cotton swabs can hurt your inner ear and what you can use instead of them in your daily life.
6. They can cause injury.
Even though it may sound crazy, cotton swabs can hurt your middle ear and, more specifically, cause your eardrum to burst. A study examining ear injuries caused by cotton swabs found that about 73% of them were caused by cleaning the ear. Considering that the study took place from 1990 to 2010 and looked at more than 263,000 kids, this is a significant number.