Is your laptop toasting your skin?
By Jenny • Oct 5th, 2010 • Category: Laptops, Mobile Computer News
- Photo: melissabain / Flickr
Specialists are warning that working with a laptop resting on your legs could damage your skin permanently. A medical report has named the condition ‘toasted skin syndrome’, and it occurs as a result of long-term exposure to heat. The condition, which leads to a mottled appearance in skin, is generally harmless – but the darkening of the skin caused by long hours working (or playing) at a laptop on your lap could be long lasting.
Skin cancer risk
Toasted skin syndrome, which can also be caused by heating pads and other sources of heat not hot enough to cause burns, is generally harmless, but in some rare cases it can cause damage that leads to skin cancer. In general, prolonged skin inflammation – like that in toasted skin syndrome – can increase the risk of developing squamous cell skin cancer, which is more aggressive than common skin cancer.
Laptops in the medical journals
In the past six years, 10 cases relating to laptops have found their way into the medical journals. In 2007 an American law student saw Dr Kimberley Salkey for treatment of the mottled discolouration on her leg. Dr Salkey was reportedly stumped until she learnt that the student spent around six hours a day working with her laptop resting on her lap. The temperature generated by the laptop was a whopping 125 degrees Fahrenheit.
In a more recent case, a 12-year-old boy developed discoloration on his left thigh after gaming on his laptop for a few hours every day over several months. Swiss researchers reported in the journal Pediatrics that the boy ‘recognised that the laptop got hot on the left side; however, regardless of that, he did not change its position.’
The manufacturers know this
This isn’t news to manufacturers of laptops, though. Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard and others warn in user manuals that users shouldn’t place laptops on laps or exposed skin for long periods of time because of the risk for burns.
If you must work with your laptop on your lap, experts advise placing your laptop bag or another heat shield under your laptop.
Tags for this article: laptop, gaming laptop




