While I still prefer a good old desktop computer, my husband enjoys sitting in front of the TV, laptop on his lap, working (or playing) for hours on end. And while it may seem like a harmless practice (after all, they call it a laptop, right?), new research says the practice may actually be harmful to your health.
They call it "toasted skin syndrome" and it's caused by long-term heat exposure, according to medical reports. In the case of laptops, that's due to the optical drive, battery or ventilation fan heating up.
According to a recent article in the journal Pediatrics, a twelve year old boy got a "sponge-patterned skin decolorization" on his left thigh from playing computer games on his lap for just a few hours a day, several months in a row.
"He recognized that the laptop got hot on the left side; however, regardless of that, he did not change its position," Swiss researchers reported in the article.
The boy is the youngest in ten laptop-induced dermatosis cases reported in medical journals in the last six years. And while the Swiss researchers say it's generally harmless, it can cause permanent skin darkening. (So not good for those trips to the beach!)
So what do you do to prevent it? Well, short of trading in your laptop, researchers suggest a carrying case or heat shield if you're going to set it in your lap. At the very least, don't place your laptop on bare skin.
And if that's not enough, another study, presented by Argentine researchers at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine conference in October, found that radiation emitted by laptops connected to the Internet while resting on user's legs may affect male fertility--reducing sperm motility and fragmenting DNA. (It's important to note that the information was presented at the conference, not published in a journal. More information may be needed on this one!)
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