Walk anywhere today and you'll see Apple AirPods dangling out of people's ears.
These cordless earbuds have become a status symbol,
I mean, who needs to actually learn to code,
when you can just pop in two earbuds and bam! You now work in tech.
Although these earbuds currently need to be taken out to charge,
Apple is accelerating wireless charging.
So what would happen if you never took off your AirPods?
First, you'd need to figure out a way to make them stick in your ears.
This is because a man named Ben Hsu recently fell asleep with his AirPods in,
and woke up with one beeping from his stomach. He'd actually swallowed it in his sleep.
I mean, this is anecdotal evidence that amazingly, AirPods can withstand stomach acid,
which has a mighty pH of 1.7.
He ran to the doctor who told him to "just wait".
The AirPod made its way through his intestines, colon, and finally out his anus.
In fact, the digestive system was so effective in differentiating the AirPod from actual nutrients,
that the headphone came out fully intact and continued to work.
So next time you see someone with AirPods on the street, just remember they could have come out of their butt.
Many people think that leaving AirPods in would cause a buildup of earwax,
but this is actually not true. Earwax is produced when objects are put in and out of your ear, like a Q-tip.
Actually, here's a hot Q-tip: don't use Q-tips. They cause earwax.
In this "hypothet situaesh," you would be leaving the AirPods in your ear and never taking them out.
So a buildup of earwax would not be an issue.
But what would be an issue is your hearing.
We spend most of our lives in air, which is a sound transmitting medium.
Because of this, our ears evolved into something we now call a transducer.
A transducer is anything that changes energy from one form to another.
Vibrating objects produce energy in the form of sound waves.
When a sound wave reaches your ear, it now causes your eardrum to physically vibrate.
This physical vibration moves hairs in your ear,
which result in neural electrical signals that are translated to your brain.
This is how you hear anything,
including whatever is coming out of your AirPods, such as music,
or season 1 of our podcast "SIDENOTE", streaming
wherever you get your podcasts.
In total this process involves your external ear, middle ear, inner ear, brainstem and brain.
But when looking at the type of damage caused by leaving any type of headphone on forever,
we need to focus on your inner ear.
Noise-induced hearing loss is something everyone who wears headphones should be thinking about.
It is one of the most common forms of acquired hearing impairment.
Children, teenagers and adults who listen to headphones for long durations of time
are at a significant risk of hearing loss.
One study found listening to your air pods for as little as seven hours a week can cause hearing loss.
This is super intense as I listen for way longer than that
I'm obsessed with music.
But there are some other studies that had less drastic results.
The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
-Okay, big name much-
say the maximum exposure our ears can take without risk is eight hours a day of sound at 85 A-weighted decibels.
A-weighted decibels, which from now on we are just gonna call decibels,
is a measurement of sound pressure in regards to the human ear.
"Eight hours" seems like a lot of time to be wearing headphones daily.
But a survey found that
17-25% of people actually felt they listened to their headphones
for longer than eight hours a day.
And when randomly stopping people at a train station in Sweden,
another study found that 46% of participants were
exceeding 85 decibels of sound from their headphones.
This meant their ears were at risk.
Air pots can reach as high as 101 decibels to 139 decibels,
depending on which lab was doing the testing.
So it's important that no matter how long you're wearing your AirPods
you keep the volume lower than 75%.
Leaving your AirPods in for any extended period of time can cause an
overexposure to sound which damages the cochlea, the outer hair cells and the stria vascularis of the inner ear.
This is why many new studies conclude
the more you listen to any type of headphone the more likely you are to have permanent hearing loss.
But even worse than all of this, is that after a week of not removing your AirPods,
you would have an infection.
At the point when you pop those earbuds in for eternity any dirt or moisture in your ear canal would get stuck.
Moisture and dirt makes bacteria feel good.
Therefore they will proliferate.
A buildup of bacteria in your ear causes inflammation and infection.
The AirPods blocking airflow in and out of your ear means more humidity and increased temperatures.
This makes the bacteria feel even happier and the infection even worse.
Within two weeks of leaving your AirPods in you would likely have a granuloma and potentially burst your eardrum.
So, even though AirPods make it so you can absolutely demolish more meetings, shoot off emails, supes fast, and appear rich,
it is important to take them out daily,
listen to them at an appropriate volume and don't sleep with them in, unless of course, you are looking for a wittle late-night snack
Now that you know to keep your ear pods low and you take them out to charge they're safe to use,
would you ever use AirPods?
No, because I'm Android for life.
Mkay, awkward...
Greg, that's not even AirPods.
They are now.
Thanks for watching. If you're interested in more ear stuff
we actually have a really popular ear test video to figure out how old your ears are.
They even talked about it on Modern Family back in the day - is that show still on?
Make sure you like and subscribe and we'll see you next week