PSA | Apple AirPods Are Not Vitamins (As This U.K. Celebrity Discovered)

It’s not the first time we’ve heard of somebody ingesting an AirPod.
Kirstie Allsopp Credit: Cubankite / Shutterstock
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A U.K. woman may have inadvertently stumbled upon why it might be a good idea for Apple to leave the stems on the next-generation AirPods Pro.

An outspoken TV presenter in the U.K. recently mistook one of her AirPods for a vitamin, swallowing it as she was taking her daily dose of pills.

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It’s not the first time we’ve heard of somebody ingesting an AirPod. The internet is rife with stories of folks accidentally swallowing AirPods in their sleep. However, it’s not too often we hear of somebody unknowingly eating an AirPod while still awake. At least not someone who is an adult.

In 2019, a navy recruiter in Taiwan, Ben Hsu, accidentally swallowed an AirPod after dozing off while wearing them. In that case, the man wasn’t even aware he’d done so until he fired up the Find My AirPods app to make it emit a sound — and was surprised to hear that sound coming from inside his body.

In most cases, folks who end up with an AirPod inside their body seek medical attention, usually visiting the nearest emergency room. Doctors typically confirm the AirPod’s location with an x-ray and tell the patient to wait for it to come out naturally. In Hsu’s case, that meant an unpleasant search through a railway station toilet, although the AirPod surprisingly came out in working condition — with 41 percent battery life remaining.

However, Allsopp said she avoided a trip to the hospital by forcing herself to vomit it back out the same way it went in. She confirmed the AirPod still worked, although she added it “smells of sick,” and she’s not sure she actually wants to put it in her ear.

Allsopp is a somewhat controversial personality in the U.K. media and has often been accused of attention-seeking behavior. So, it’s not surprising that some of her critics called her out on this, accusing her of either making up the story entirely or simply being clueless for making such a mistake in the first place.

In response, Allsopp explained that she had put her vitamins in her pocket while getting a glass of water, and when she reached in to pull them out and gulp them down, an AirPod was also in the mix.

She also shared a photo of an AirPod — presumably the one in question — among an assortment of pills, suggesting that it wasn’t “quite as daft as some might say.”

However, it’s notable that the AirPod shown is a first- or second-generation model — the largest of Apple’s family of true wireless earbuds. While it’s possible to imagine how it could be swallowed in lengthwise orientation, it’s still considerably larger than any of the pills shown.

Then again, it’s not that hard to believe if Allsopp indeed downs this many pills each day in a single gulp. That’s a lot of vitamins. Hopefully, the new Medication app coming to iOS 16 and watchOS 9 will help her avoid such calamities in the future.

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