An Australian woman candidly detailed her experience with a could-have-been deadly infection that occurred after she used cotton swabs to clean out her ears. She’s now warning others to be wary of ...

Cleaning earwax build-up may look like a simple task, but needs to be performed with great care to avoid risk of injury. Dr ...

Most of us have done it. After a shower, you grab a cotton swab, tilt your head, and twist it gently inside your ear. It feels satisfying, almost like a ritual. The cotton comes out with a hint of ...

A man with a compulsive interest in cleaning his ears with Q-tips ended up in the hospital with a brain abscess caused by a cotton swab that got lost in his ear canal, a researcher reported. "Brain ...

A man in England has sworn off cleaning his ears with cotton swabs after developing a potentially life-threatening infection that not only affected his hearing, but also spread to the lining of his ...

A man who apparently lived with a cotton bud stuck in his ear for years before it led to a dangerous infection is highlighting the risk of cleaning ears with swabs. Doctors recently described his ...

Melissa Breyer was Treehugger’s senior editorial director before moving to Martha Stewart. Her writing and photography have been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, ...

Feel the need to clean your child’s ears? Step away from that cotton swab. Despite years of warnings to avoid putting the product into the ear canal, more than 263,000 children in the U.S. had to be ...

She got more than an earful. Every night before bed, 37-year-old Jasmine would clean her ears with a cotton swab. She had no idea how much damage she was causing until she nearly died. “I’d been ...

A healthy 31-year-old man developed an infection in the lining of his brain because part of a cotton swab had unknowingly become lodged in his ear, according to a case report. The man arrived at an ...