Associated Press is reporting that a Canadian jogger suffered burns, ruptured eardrums and a broken jaw when lightning traveled through his music player’s wires. This isn’t the first time a bolt has traveled along an iPod, creating a conduit for injury.

“Emergency physicians report treating other patients with burns from freak accidents while using personal electronic devices such as beepers, Walkman players and laptop computers outdoors during storms.

Michael Utley, a former stockbroker from West Yarmouth, Mass., who survived being struck by lightning while golfing, has tracked 13 cases since 2004 of people hit while talking on cell phones. They are described on his Web site, http://www.struckbylightning.org.”

Electronic devices do NOT attract lightning the way a tall tree or a lightning rod does. It just gives the electricity a path to follow.

“It’s going to hit where it’s going to hit, but once it contacts metal, the metal conducts the electricity,” said Dr. Mary Ann Cooper of the American College of Emergency Physicians and an ER doctor at University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago.

Remember - get inside, and don’t use electrical gadgets - like Bluetooth devices - in a thunderstorm.

Share This