For as long as we can remember, parents have been warned against using cotton swabs to clean their children's ears, but this is still proving to be an issue, sending thousands of kids to the hospital. A new study published in The Journal of Pediatrics revealed that from 1990 to 2010, more than 263,000 children had been treated in emergency rooms for cotton-tip-applicator-related ear injuries in the United States.
Although the study was framed around individuals under the age of 18, children under 8 made up about 67 percent of the study and children under 3 retained the highest degree of injury. It's important to point out that the most common diagnosis of these emergency room incidents was "the presence of a foreign body and tympanic membrane perforation," which means that a portion the cotton swab was stuck in the ear canal, causing damage to the eardrum.