Planned Obsolescence

From Wiki: "In industrial design is a policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period of time."

And so, the Acu-Life Ear Wax Removal Syringe from Health Enterprises Inc., with its "patented doctor design", has been thoughtfully made fragile. Well, designing doctor, I say to you: "First, do no harm!" That is your Hippocratic oath. By designing such a piece of crap, you are doing harm to the environment.

And now, please don't ask me why I would need to buy an ear wax removal syringe when ear wax moves out of the ear canal naturally without external aids... Let's just say my kids complain and I thought it would be kind of cool to use a syringe like they have in a physician's office.)

Behold the broken product, which lasted a good 10 minutes before unceremoniously breaking in two.

I then researched why the plunger was designed this way, not a straight continuous piece, but two pieces tapering in the middle to a small point of contact. It seems that the plunger in some syringes is designed to be breakable, so that they are limited to one use only. There are multiple risks involved in re-using a needle:

The tip of a reused needle can be weakened to the point where it breaks off and gets stuck under your skin. From BD's site (which manufacturers needles, clearly they are not objective):

"A reused needle doesn't inject as easily or as cleanly as a new one and can cause pain, bleeding, and bruising.

Studies have shown that there's a link between needle reuse and the appearance of lumps of fatty tissue that can form at an injection site (lipodystrophy).

BD's thin, fine, high quality needles are designed to be used one time only. These are photographs showing the type of damage that can occur with needle reuse.*"

But in this case, there is NO problem with needle re-use. There is no needle on the ear wax removal syringe. The syringe is simply an ordinary syringe with a Luer Lock (screw on) tip, with a patented blue plastic attachment that directs the water spray.

I wrote to Health Enterprises and received an offer for a replacement the very next day. The replacement was also promptly mailed to me (but it still had the breakable plunger). Excellent customer service, and essentially, the company has made nothing on the sale. Which leads to my feeling guilty for posting this.

However, I have the best solution which still allows Health Enterprises to make a profit. You should still buy the product: it works very well, and it is safe enough for my kids to use it unsupervised. After some research of options for ear wax removal on the market, I chose this based on reviews. After purchasing, go to any pharmacy and purchase a 60 cc Luer Lock syringe for about $1.60 CAD to swap out with the original 20 cc syringe when the original breaks (as it will). Functionally, it is superior, as you find that you will quickly run out of water when you use the 10cc model. It is the special tip which is what you are paying your $5 toward, not the ordinary syringe. And, if you're fortunate or gentle enough that the syringe never breaks, then everyone is happy.

Below, a picture of the original packaging (top), the original syringe 20 cc (middle), and my souped up gigantic 60 cc syringe with the original tip attached (below).