Did you know that you can get hurt bad (even killed) by lightning if you are listening to your iPod or talking on your cell phone during a thunderstorm?

The danger of talking on a landline telephone or even standing near electrical appliances was known for a long time. But cell phones? iPods?

According to a case study published by British Medical Journal (BMJ), a 15 year old girl was hit by lightning while talking to her friend on her cell phone in a thunderstorm. She had a heart attack but was saved.

After the incident she did not remember anything about the incident. Memory loss is a frequent side effect of lightning hits. But the people who witnessed the event confirmed the report.

A year later the British lightning victim developed a number of additional ailments, including deafness in the ear where she was holding her cell phone.

However, the danger is not a universally accepted one. Some U.S. sources deny the danger, claiming there is no direct relationship between a lightning and cell phone and iPod usage.

But there is a universal consensus that carrying metallic objects in a thunderstorm is not a good idea. Since both cell phones and iPods do have metallic parts, it makes inherent logical sense not to carry such items when there is a thunderstorm out there.

An interesting factoid from news.BBC.co.uk: “A lightning bolt travels at about 14,000 miles per hour and heats up the air around it to 30,000°C - five times hotter than the surface of the sun.”

Would you want to press against your ear any gadgets in a thunderstorm that have even the remotest probability of transferring 30,000°C heat at 14,000 miles per hour? It’s your call.