Ah, there is that concern versus the concern that we don’t put people into rubber rooms either — that we give them some margin for error without blaming the maker of the product that they foolishly used. Q-tips are good for a lot of things not even on the body. It’s a nanny statist’s dream to ban them, but we would be poorer for it.
I will confess: I am from a staunch “stick stuff in your ear to get out the wax” family. The curved end of bobby pins are good ear wax scoops, as it turns out — and the final cleaning was done with Q-tips. And none of us ever suffered a perforated eardrum as a consequence, though sometimes I got a passing ear infection later as an adult from Q-tips scratching (now I just rinse my ears in the shower, and the moderate cleaning that affords keeps my ear flora within a reasonable range, and I haven’t had wax problems for years).
But sticking stuff in the ear to try to deal with stuff already in the ear is probably as old as cave men. The printed official warning not to use Q-tips for that purpose (maybe qualified with “except under the direction of a nurse or physician”) would be quite enough in a world I was king in.
About the talc-and-cancer scandal? It’s likely that the people who most wanted to use the talc were those suffering irritations already, and thus were already at risk for cancer. Why do we have the separation of court and science here?
Another good ear cleaner is a 3% solution of hydrogen peroxide.
It’s crackly, too!