iPod thrills but also "Kills", if used during thunderstorm

The use of an iPod during a thunderstorm may put pedestrians, joggers and bicyclists into health troubles, according to a report published in this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The report is based on an incident that occurred in Vancouver, British Columbia, and involved a 37-year-old iPod-listening jogger, who suffered serious injuries when he was struck by lightning. The Canadian jogger suffered wishbone-shaped chest and neck burns, ruptured eardrums and a broken jaw when lightning traveled through the headphone attached to his music player.

In the letter published under the title, “Thunderstorms and iPods — Not a Good iDea”, Eric Heffernan, Peter Munk, and Luck J. Louis, the injured man’s doctors from the Vancouver General Hospital explained that the man was jogging in the summer of 2005 when an adjacent tree was struck by lightning, and then jumped to the jogger, travelling through his music player's wires.

"Witnesses reported that he was thrown approximately 8 ft from the tree," say the authors of the letter. His jawbone broke in several places, and both his tympanic membranes (eardrums) were "ruptured," leading to severe hearing loss, they wrote.

According to the report, the jogger also had burns down his left leg and foot, where, as per the doctors, the electricity exited his body, blowing his sneaker to pieces in the process.

Although, it is still ambiguous if iPods increase the risk of being struck by lightning, the physicians fear Apple’s revolutionary gaming console may increase the damage.

Apple launched the iPod five and half years ago, since then it has continued to introduce ten different iPod models to date. This includes five series of iPod, two series of iPod nano, two series of iPod mini and two generations of iPod shuffle.

The first iPod introduced in November 2001 had a storage capacity of 5GB initially, which over the years, has developed and grown to proffer a tremendous capacity of 80GB.

The enhancement and addition of more features in the iPod was a proof of its continuous market demand. iPod was proved to be a ground-breaking product in the music industry, music lovers all over the world cannot imagine how life would have been without iPod and its products.

In April, Apple announced the sale of its 100 Millionth iPod, marking another first in the arena of Digital Music.