If you are constantly using cotton swabs, that means you are constantly throwing away cotton swabs. This ear-cleaning, makeup-wiping habit isn’t exactly eco-friendly — but there’s a way it can be.

You've probably used cotton swabs to clean your ears. Here's why ENTs say you shouldn't. (Getty Images) "Don’t put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear." It's the kind of thing you may have ...

Feel the need to clean your child’s ears? Step away from that cotton swab. Despite years of warnings to avoid putting the product into the ear canal, more than 263,000 children in the U.S. had to be ...

Instead of removing earwax from our ears, cotton swabs are just as likely to push wax up against the eardrum, causing it to become impacted and muffling our hearing. Credit: Photo by Sharon McCutcheon ...

It says right there on the packaging: “Do not insert swab into ear canal.” Speak with an ear-nose-and-throat doctor, and you’ll hear the same thing. “We always say, ‘Never put anything smaller than ...