Until now, the most common health warning one would have heard about the iPod was the risk of hearing loss for prolonged listening at a high volume. Well, the British Chiropractic Association has warned about another serious health issue with the iPod, where one can get a serious injury by simply navigating through their iPod's playlist using their thumb.
When one uses their thumb to scroll the wheel on an iPod, their thumb is moved in a totally unnatural way; separating the thumb's joint in the process. When this is repeated over time, it can cause painful thumb and finger inflammation and so far there have been reported cases of this even leading to elbow and neck issues. Some American health experts share the same concern and are already putting the pressure on Apple about this.
As Apple has sold over 27 million iPods worldwide with 6.5 million alone between August and October this year, Carl Irwin from the British Chiropractic Association expects a rise in patients complaining about these symptoms over the next 6 months, which are typical of repetitive stress injury (RSI). Chiropractors have mentioned that one way to avoid injury is to hold the iPod in one hand and use a finger from the other hand to navigate. Other tips include using lengthy playlists or the iPod's shuffle mode to reduce the amount of thumb navigation.
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Carl Irwin, from the British Chiropractic Association, said: "This is a really serious problem. The action needed to move the wheel on an iPod is totally unnatural and effectively separates the joint in the thumb every time you use it. "This causes inflammation in the thumb or fingers and can be very painful. We have also seen cases of iPod users where the problem has spread to their elbow and neck." Mr Irwin said he expected to see a rise over the next six months of patients complaining of symptoms typical of repetitive stress injury (RSI). Children using their players for extended periods could be storing up problems for adulthood as their joints were still growing, he added. Apple, the maker of the iPod, has refused to comment on the warning. The company also faces pressure from American health experts who share the same concern over potential RSI risks. |
It seems like portable CD players would be the least likely to cause this sort of issue due to the limited number of tracks one can scroll through, not to mention that CD players don't have a scroll wheel. The same goes for flash based MP3 players which have a very limited song capacity, since users are effectively forced to think twice of placing music they would likely skip over on the player.
As the iPod can hold several thousand songs, a lot of consumers simply dump their entire MP3 collection on to the player, rather than pick out the songs they like to hear. As a result, when one wants to listen to their favourite music, unless they have created a playlist on the iPod, they would likely need to scroll through quite a lot of music they would likely never listen to in order to play their next favourite song.
Source: Scotsman
