MP3 earphones dangerous for pacemakers
Headphones used with MP3 digital music players like the iPod may interfere with heart pacemakers and implantable defibrillators, U.S. researchers said on Sunday. The MP3 players themselves posed no threat to pacemakers and defibrillators, used to normalize heart rhythm. But strong little magnets inside the headphones can foul up the devices if placed within 1.2 inches of them, the researchers told an American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans. Dr. William Maisel of the Medical Device Safety Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston led a team that tested eight models of MP3 player headphones, including clip-on and earbud types, in 60 defibrillator and pacemaker patients.
They placed the headphones on the patients’ chests, directly over the devices. The headphones interfered with the heart devices in about a quarter of the patients — 14 of the 60 — and interference was twice as likely in those with a defibrillator than with a pacemaker. So that means people with pacemakers or defibrillators should not place the headphones in a shirt pocket or coat pocket near the chest when they are not being used, drape them over their chest or have others who are wearing headphones rest their head on the patient’s chest, Maisel said. Most of the headphones had magnetic field strengths more than 20 times higher than the threshold for interfering with pacemakers or defibrillators, he said.
Source: Reuters
So, if your ears are next to your nipples, and you’re listening to music through your iPod, and you have a pacemaker fitted, then theres a 25% chance you might die?
You got more chance of being killed by a shark.
And only 4 people a year die of shark attacks
@JJ when i wear earphones i usually let them hang around my neck when not listening to them… that’s easily close to where a pacemaker would be fitted, if i had a pacemaker and not known this it could have been quite dangerous
They’re just trying to let people know what they found out and it’s not a 25% chance you’ll die just that it will interfere with your pacemaker
It seems i have to throw away my pacemaker
Martin, you sexist cvnt, I hope YOU have a heart attack.
who would love to die of a strok on a hot sexy women and not listen to mp3s or you could do both cum and die at the same time pop goes the pacemaker and pop goes the fish
thanks
They should put some form of magnetic shielding on those pacemakers.
Those are my headphones, just ina different colour, sennheiser all the way.
well, more science jibbarish ..Thanks..
what a stupid headline, proves stinking kid involvement