4 minute read
as it often goes, some of the greatest inventions were created by women, with both the fame and fortune landing in the hands of someone else — usually a man. the lengthy list includes wireless communication , developed by actress hedy lamarr, who never saw a cent from the multi-billion-dollar industry her idea helped create; the modern bra , whose creator caresse crosby sold the patent to warner brothers corset company for $1500 — earning the company $15 million over the next 30 years; and the first computer program, which was written by ada lovelace — her contributions unsurprisingly overshadowed by those of her collaborator husband.
but it isn’t just the big-ticket items women inventors concocted – and lost credit for. there’s also…wait for it… the cotton swab. after watching his wife painstakingly attach balls of cotton to the ends of a toothpick for cleaning their daughter’s ears after her daily baths, which he certainly wasn’t administering, leo gerstenzang thought to bring this trick out into the world . his design featured a ready-made swab that would be (moderately) safer for children, comprised of a wooden swab that didn’t have as much of a risk of cutting or having cotton stuck in the ear. the package itself was designed so that a parent could open it with just one hand and grab a swab with the other all while holding their baby.
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in the 1980s, business continued to boom, and the brand shifted to 100 per cent cotton for all swabs. keen to jump on the bandwagon, unilever acquired chesebrough-ponds and its many, many lucrative cotton swabs. nowadays, you can pick up a box of 500 for just $5, as compared to 1927, when you could buy 60 swabs for an adorable 25 cents .
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now, the most common spindle is made of plastic, which holds up better in water and is more flexible. that said, plastic swabs have grown increasingly less popular as one of the most common forms of litter that contribute to plastic waste and raise the risk of marine pollution. in response, some companies and retailers have gone as far as no longer producing the plastic swabs, and opting instead for biodegradable paper swabs. making the first big move, johnson & johnson stopped selling plastic swabs in 2017 in much of the world for this reason.
this is also your personal reminder to quit flushing your used cotton swabs down the toilet, a common practice for an astounding amount of people. as dr. clare cavers of the scottish environmental charity fidra once said to the independent , “the message cannot be strong enough that only the three ps (pee, toilet paper and poo) should be flushed, and anything else should go in a bin.” amen.
in fact, get a load of this stat: in the u.s., between 1990 and 2010, an estimated 263,338 children went to hospital emergency rooms for cotton swab injuries, which equates to about 35 injuries a day. according to the journal of pediatrics , 73 per cent of these cases involved ear cleaning.
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now, most doctors don’t recommend using cotton swabs to clean ears, as they can not only injure you , but push the ear wax ever deeper into your ear canal. to make matters worse, all q-tips boxes have come with the following warning for about five decades since their invention: “do not insert inside the ear canal.” much like a cigarette pack warning, it’s gone largely ignored. certainly, it’s difficult to look at a skinny spindle with furry swabs on the ends and not want to ram it into one’s ears, especially if those ears are itchy, but please do so with caution and tenderness. after all, that’s how it all began.
