this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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This seems to be largely an American phenomenon, that people sue the maker of a product for themselves failing to use the product correctly, no? Or at least I can't remember a single instance outside America where either someone sued the producer for using a product incorrectly or the producer pre-emtpively puts warnings on for ridiculous stuff to not get sued if people try these things.
Either way, good to know that cotton swabs were primarily made indeed to clean ears. I don't use them for that, but it always weirded me out when they came in those pastelle color packages with openings like tissues, perfect for a bathroom, but someone said "Yo, don't use them for your ears! They were made for swabbing grease off motor chains."
Not a lot of products have to do that. The one people bandy about is McDonalds adding "Caution: Coffee Is Hot" to their stuff, but the actual coffee spill lawsuit was over coffee hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns. Few things need cautions against their intended use.
Q-Tips / cotton swabs are an almost uniquely bad tool. It's incredibly easy to rupture your ear drums. There's no actual health benefit to swabbing your ears -- it just feels good your ears get itchy. A safer tool could be made, but it'd be more expensive, more involved to use, and there's probably several but I can't be bothered to find out, and neither can you. They make a product that they know is inherently dangerous to use and has no specific benefit. So it has a warning against doing it. Same as cigarette packs have a warning that they cause cancer, even though everyone buying them knows that and smokes them anyway.
Better ear cleaning tools exist. They are little plastic scoops. I used to use a bent paperclip. Basically anything you can put into the ear canal and then pull/scoop/scrape earwax out is far better than a qtip, which only compacts wax into clumps. The one good use case for the qtip is drying. They can absorb water well inside the ear canal and belly button. I personally use them on my navel after showering since I have an "innie"
You can get soft silicone ear pickers with a built in camera now so you can see what you're scooping.