ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 29, 1996 TAG: 9608290019
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Today I'd like to talk to you about a serious topic, a divisive topic, a topic of universal appeal and intergalactic proportions:
Earwax removal.
Note that I will be talking, not listening, or otherwise conversing in a back-and-forth reciprocal manner.
This is because I have a white hunk of cotton the size of a golf ball protruding from my left ear. This is because I have spent a recent morning in the reclining chair of Roanoke ear-nose-throat specialist Dr. Kurt Chen.
Dr. Chen is a nice man, a thorough man, a man who knows ear-wax in all its myriad forms. He took one look at me from across his exam room, noted the river of blood oozing from my ear, and offered an immediate diagnosis:
``Q-Tip.''
Precisely.
I'm the freak accident the WARNING label on the back of the back of the box cautions you against.
My name is Beth M., and I'm a recovering Q-Tipper.
We are the ear specialist's bread-and-butter, and we are legion. Even Chen's wife, internist Dr. Jennifer Chen, has been known to incorrectly swab on a daily basis - despite her husband's professional tsk-tsks.
To really scare the earwax out of me, Chen described a woman he once treated who inserted a Q-Tip in her ear, then rushed to apply deodorant. While raising her arm for the deodorant - forgetting about the dangling Q - her shoulder inadvertently knocked in the swab and punctured her ear drum, resulting in a 20 percent hearing loss.
A little parable about the menace of misuse, he offered. I`m lucky I got away with just a cut. This time.
A random investigation confirmed my suspicion of rampant Q-Tip procedure violations across the Roanoke Valley. Health professional Jennifer Tilley, a pharmacist at the Towers Mall Revco, owned up to her own addiction without pause.
``Yes. And yes, they warned us against all that in school,'' she said. ``My roommate's a maniac about it; all my friends are, and we're all pharmacists.''
Even Sandra Brown Kelly, our health reporter, conceded she does it - ``but carefully.'' Peering over her half-glasses at me, she offered this tip: ``Don't be so vigorous.''
A Roanoke nurse named Karen, who did not want her last name used, echoed Kelly's advice and added: ``Of course I clean my ears with them. What else would you use a Q-Tip for?''
Plenty, according to the makers of Q-Tip at Chesebrough-Pond's USA. ``Cleaning baby umbilical cords ... detailing your car ... cleaning the OUTSIDE of your ear ... make-up removal ... One man even made a clock out of Q-Tips. It's hanging in our president's office.
``It's all a matter of imagination.''
So says Eileen Sharkey, director of public affairs, who adds: ``Sticking anything in your ear is not advisable, whether it's a pencil if you have an itch, or your finger, or whatever,'' she added.
Addictees may be interested to know that Q-Tips were invented in 1922 by Polish immigrant Leo Gerstenzang, who conceived the idea after watching his wife apply a piece of cotton to the end of a toothpick for use on their infant daughter, according to an 1962 annual report article called ``The Fascinating Story of Q-Tips Brand Products.''
It was not made clear in the story whether Mrs. Gerstenzang was going after a gob of earwax or not. But I have my suspicions.
Q-Tips were first sold under the name Baby Gays, although Mrs. G. preferred the name ``Cute Tips'' - hence the evolution of the name.
Sharkey would not quantify the percentage of Q-Tips that are purchased for the express purpose of nose-thumbing the warning label. ``There are BILLIONS of Q-Tips ... manufactured every year. So the likelihood of a percentage of those billions being used incorrectly, I would say, is pretty high.''
Chen, the ear specialist, guessed that 30 percent to 50 percent of the U.S. population flirts daily with eardrum disaster. He sees five to six overzealous Q-Tippers a year.
Speaking for Q-Tips' competitor, Johnson's Pure Cotton Swabs, Katherine Armstrong would not touch the controversy with a 10-foot swab. She echoed the sentiments of seventh-grade health teachers everywhere:
``Never put anything smaller in your ear than your elbow.''
Asked if Armstrong herself used a cotton swab to remove earwax, she said: ``Oh dear, oh dear ... Do I swab? ...
``Well, if I do personally, I think it's irrelevant ... ''
I'm sorry, Ms. Armstrong. Could you speak up a bit? I couldn't quite hear you ...
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: color graphic by ROBERT LUNSFORD STAFFby CNB