Why You Should Never Use Q-tips in Your Ears Again

Q-tips have been around forever. Since we were all kids. They were actually created in 1923, so unless you’re 99 years old reading this, they’ve been around since long before you were born. Q-tips were created to remove wax from our ears, but there are a few key reasons why you may wand to reconsider using them.

This archaic way of removing wax from the ear drums is questionable at best, which we’ll dive into in today’s article.

There are two key reasons why avoiding Q-tips may be smarter than using Que tips based on what people experience using Q-tips.

3 Reasons Q-Tips Do More Harm Than Good

Reason #1: Most Q-tips are made from cotton and cotton is actually called ‘the world’s dirtiest crop’ and why’s that? Well, it turns out that bugs absolutely LOVE cotton. It’s like a fluffy pillow for them. Because of the bugs, worms and spider mites the cotton is absolutely doused with $2-3 billion dollars of pesticides on an annual basis. These are so toxic that it is quite literally classified as hazardous by the WHO, the World Health Organization. These toxic agrochemicals accumulate in the cotton and are linked to cancer, infertility, birth defects and more. So putting that in your ear drum doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Reason #2: Believe it or not, Q-tips don’t actually do the job that well. Before you get all bent out of shape because this is how things have been done for 99 years, allow me to explain. A Q-tip is essentially a cotton swab on either end of a stick. This stick is shoved into your ear, pushed against the side of your ear drum and when you pull it out there is ear wax on it! Right? Wrong! Well, somewhat right. While there is earwax on the cotton swab that you just pulled out of your eardrum, the process of pushing the Q-tip into your ear actually pushed a portion of that ear wax DEEPER into your ear canal. The ear drum will then have more long term problems. So while it seems like you got the wax out and everything is good, there’s actually more ear wax going deeper into your ear drum and building up each time you do this. Not a wise call. In fact, some people have ear wax so deep in their ear canal that it can require surgical intervention!

Reason #3: Cotton uses 360 pounds of fertilizer per acre which is super toxic to the environment and water supply when it rains. This contaminates food, and the water system as a whole which is not only bad for the health of the planet but bad for our local food supply and water ecosystem. Additionally, cotton takes approximately 713 gallons of water just to produce ONE cotton t-shirt. Can you imagine that? Cotton is simply bad for the environment as it is not grown in a harmonious and sustainable way with nature.

What Can You Use Instead Of Q-Tips?

Okay, so you still have earwax in your ear canal and this article doesn’t help much if I don’t offer some sort of solution correct. Thankfully there are solutions that don’t require you to shove earwax deeper into your ear canal with a pesticide rich cotton swab!

Amazon.com has everything. You can find a camera that you stick in your ear to strategically remove earwax based on seeing where it is for yourself. There’s also a bit of options on amazon, another one is a drill that essentially drills backwards (in reverse) to pull earwax out of your ear.

You can find different options and reviews on amazon by clicking here. 

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