Bad news for Apple’s camp: doctors recommend using the tiny gadget anywhere but outside a storm area, because of the potential danger that the iPod poses when a lightning strikes.

In the past we have seen Senator Kruger’s hilarious idea to ban the iPods and any other gadget that distracts our attention, from the streets of New York. His proposition came as a consequence of a young man’s death, who got hit by a bus while he was inattentively listening to some tunes played on his iPod.

Although both the media and Apple’s fans slammed Kruger’s intention- eventually sending it into oblivion-, it appears that Kruger was right. At least partially.

A medical case investigated in 2005 and reported recently in the latest issue of New England Journal of Medicine, revealed iPod’s potential health hazard when it comes to lightning strikes.
 
A 37-year-old Canadian jogger hiding under a tree during a storm near Vancouver got hit by a lightning. However, the interesting part is that the unfortunate jogger was listening to religious music at his iPod and that the inoffensive MP3 player caused him irreparable damage.

He suffered burns tracing a pattern from his chest, where he was holding his iPod, to his ears - following the path of the device's earphone cables.

To add injury to injury, the jolt also ruptured his eardrums, dislocated the bones in his middle ear, broke his jaw in four places and dislocated it for good measure. He suffered around 50 per cent permanent hearing loss.

Vancouver General Hospital radiologist Dr. Eric Heffernan, who co-authored the report, explained: "Most people hit by lightning get away with minor burns. It's because skin is highly resistent and stops electricity from entering the body. It's called the flashover effect - although it can stop your heart and kill you.”

"But 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."