Ban the Cotton Bud

You will probably never meet a doctor who has a good thing to say about cotton buds. People will stick a range of mind-boggling objects into their ear to remove wax or just give it a good scratch. The humble and innocuous cotton bud causes more trouble than all of them combined.

The skin of the ear canal is thin and delicate and the eardrum is surprisingly not that far away either.  Pushing an ear bud in and rotating it repeatedly because it feels good to scratch that itch can abrade the skin setting up a painful outer ear infection. Put it slightly too far and the eardrum can be damaged and even ruptured.