Popular household plant can cause severe ear damage

In almost every household, one can find indoor plants that, apart from being beneficial for the environment, also contribute to the beauty of the house. However, it turns out that not all indoor plants are safe and one of them can even damage ear drums badly.

A plant known as ‘Yucca plant’ is one of the very popular of indoor plantations. They are hardy, evergreen, sword-shaped shrubs and trees with spiky leaves. A team of doctors from Australia discovered that if someone has a bunch of these over sized plants in the house, there is a risk of loss in hearing and ‘traumatic ear injuries’.

Over the duration of five years, 28 patients were researched upon by an otolaryngologist Stephen O’Leary. Twenty five of the 28 people had ruptured eardrums, while the other three had an ear canal abrasion (a nasty scratch) because of the entry of the pointed leaves into the ears, the team wrote in the journal Clinical Otolaryngology describing Yucca plants as a form of ‘garden terror’.

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IFL Science explains, eardrum is a thin membrane that vibrates when sound waves hit it. The vibrations are transferred to the inner ear that let us hear sounds. If the inner ear is pierced by a Yucca plant’s leaf, the person can suffer hearing loss.

O’Leary told ABC Radio, “A lot of people are a bit worried about their eyes when they think of the yucca plant. But they don’t really think that if the yucca plant is next to them, that those fronds can actually pass straight down the ear canal, like an arrow.”

The doctors accepted that these types of ear injuries are not common and not widely reported. They advised that one should be careful around these plants while gardening or any such kind of activity.