Next time you walk into a wall of sound thumping through your head and body, and feel like screaming 'you're bursting my ears' at the teenage perpetrator, try this new line: 'You'll break your lungs!'
Why? Well, shock value's not a bad start, but there's a better reason. Medical evidence now suggests that very loud music can cause a pneumothorax, a condition where the lining of the lungs spring a leak
and part of, or even the whole, lung collapses.
According to a paper published in the medical journal Thorax, a journal devoted to chest conditions, there have been five cases of pneumothorax caused by people being too close to speakers thumping out very loud music.
Five may not seem a lot but remember, these are the ones we know about. We thought we only had a few cases of Sars until someone went back and checked and found there had been hundreds in Guangzhou already.
Most people who come into hospital with this condition get diagnosed as suffering a 'spontaneous pneumothorax' which means 'your lung collapsed and we don't know why'. Asking about recent exposure to loud music isn't one of the usual questions a doctor asks in the middle of this kind of emergency.
However, maybe it should be. According to the report, all the cases were people standing next to music speakers when it happened.