MP3 headphones hazardous to pacemaker patients
p2pnet news view Music | Off Topic:- If you have a pacemaker and you’re listening to your favourite music on an mp3 player, it could prove hazardous to your health.
And if you fall into that category, don’t even let your girlfriend or boyfriend snuggle up close if he or she’s wearing headphones, says a new study.
Because magnetic interference could prove fatal.
If you have a defibrillator implant, don’t keep your iPod listening device anywhere near your chest, even if the player isn’t being used, says William Maisel, director of the medical device safety institute at Beth Israel Medical Centre in Boston, Massachusetts.
Patients should keep headphones more than three centimetres away, says The Guardian.
He and his team tested eight different models, including clip-on and ear-bud varieties, says the story, adding:
“These were all connected to an iPod, although any brand of MP3 player would have had the same effect. Most headphone types contain small amounts of the magnetic metal neodymium.
“The team placed the headphones on the skin above the implanted device of 60 defibrillator and pacemaker patients and detected an impact on the device’s operation in 14 patients.”
“When a magnet is placed on a defibrillator, it temporarily deactivates the device,” said Maisel. “In other words the defibrillator stops looking for dangerous fast heart rhythms, and if a patient had a life-threatening heart rhythm problem while the magnet was over the device, it would not treat it.”
He and other doctors tested eight models in 60 people with heart devices, says the Boston Herald.
“When headphones were about an inch from the device, interference was detected nearly one-fourth of the time – in four of the 27 pacemaker patients and 10 of the 33 with defibrillators. One pacemaker even reset itself in one patient, ” it says
So it’s, ” smart to keep small electronics at least a few inches from implanted medical devices, and not let someone wearing headphones lean against your chest if you have one,” says Maisel.
The Guardian – MP3 headphones can deactivate pacemakers, study shows, November 10, 2008
Boston Herald – Study: Earphones obstruct heart devices, November 10, 2008
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November 10th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Sometime nature make a mistake and an organism that are not suppose to exist does. This is the case with Small pox, polio-myelitis and tap worms. Small pox and Polio Myelitis have been eradicated by human and the tapworm is very near extinction.
It is the same with the executives of the recording industry. What is hasardous to your health is not the “MP3″ Player but the major record labels crap that they call “music”.
What we did to the small pox, polio-myelitis and the tap worms we can do it to the recording industry too. We can get rid of all the executives parasites and their lawers and make these two terrible species extinct.
November 10th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Sorry!
I mean:
“. . .and an organism that is not suppose to exist does.”