VANCOUVER - Earbuds are more like spark plugs if you are struck by lightning while listening to an iPod, warns a Vancouver doctor.
"Most people hit by lightning get away with minor burns," said Vancouver General Hospital radiologist Dr. Eric Heffernan yesterday. "It's because skin is highly resistant and stops electricity from entering the body. It's called the flashover effect -- although it can stop your heart and kill you."
Being plugged into earbuds -- a style of tiny headphone -- or other electronic devices can change the physics of flashovers.
Dr. Heffernan is the lead author in an article in this week's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine which looks at instances of people who are struck by lightning while attached to electronic devices.
It tells how a 37-year-old jogger was caught in a thunderstorm in a Burnaby, B.C., park in June, 2005. He was hit by lightning as he stood under a tree listening to music from his iPod.
His injuries were far worse than they might have been had he not been so attached to his iPod, the article says.
"In this case, the victim had earphones on and had been sweating from jogging so this was a case of disrupted flashover and the earphones transmitted the electrical current into his head. It's the first time we've had a recorded case of such an incident involving a person wearing headphones and we think the public should be warned," said Dr. Heffernan.
The article was authored by Heffernan and his colleagues in Vancouver General's radiology department, Dr. Peter Munk and Dr. Luck Louis. They could only find one other account of someone being hit by lightning while wearing an iPod.
"There was someone in Colorado that was hit, but this only resulted in minor burns and it wasn't a recorded case," he said.
The injuries suffered by the unidentified Lower Mainland jogger were significant. The lightning burned his chest, neck and face with the burns tracing the position of the earphones.
The patient's eardrums were ruptured and tiny bones in his middle ears dislocated. His jaw was broken in four places and dislocated --likely due to his violent muscle contractions in his jaw.
The metal headphones helped channel the current through his head, the doctors wrote. And it's not just iPods people have to be concerned about -- anything similar that requires headphones or even cellphones being held to the ear could result in similar injuries.