How exactly does event.preventDefault() affect the DOM?

Based on someone's advice I added this line $('body').on('touchstart', function(event){ event.preventDefault() }) in my mobile webapp to disable the native app bouncing in iOS. It works great for disabling the bounce but gives me some weird behavior elsewhere in DOM.

Click events that don't work, etc. I was hoping to get a better understanding of what this does and how to work around it's effects elsewhere in the DOM.

Thanks!

EDIT:

I have these two lines:

  $('body').on('touchstart', function(e){ e.preventDefault() };
  $('#home').on('click', function(){ alert('home') };

If I comment out the preventDefault line then the #home line works. If I leave it in the #home line doesn't respond. #home is just a div nested in the body.

Any idea what could be causing this behavior? It's part of a bigger codebase so it;s hard to give you all the details but I don't even know where to start.

Thanks Again!