Doctors writing in the New England Journal of Medicine today warned that using a portable music player such as an Apple Inc. iPod outdoors when lightning threatens can be dangerous.
Physicians at Vancouver General Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, cited a 2005 incident where a 35-year-old man was brought into the emergency ward after being struck by lightning while jogging as he
listened to his iPod. Along with second-degree burns on his chest and left leg, the man had two burns along the front of this chest and neck, then to the sides of his face.
The burns, said the doctors, "correspond[ed] to the positions of his earphones at the time of the lightning strike." Both of the man's eardrums were ruptured, they added, and his jaw was fractured.
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