'Toasted Skin Syndrome'

I was amused to see a report with this headline today.

Have you ever worked on your laptop computer with it sitting on your lap, heating up your legs? If so, you might want to rethink that habit.

Doing it a lot can lead to “toasted skin syndrome,” an unusual-looking mottled skin condition caused by long-term heat exposure, according to medical reports.

. . .

Major manufacturers including Apple, Hewlett Packard and Dell warn in user manuals against placing laptops on laps or exposed skin for extended periods of time because of the risk for burns.

A medical report several years ago found that men who used laptops on their laps had elevated scrotum temperatures. If prolonged, that kind of heat can decrease sperm production, which can potentially lead to infertility. Whether laptop use itself can cause that kind of harm hasn’t been confirmed.

In the past, “toasted skin syndrome” has occurred in workers whose jobs require being close to a heat source, including bakers and glass blowers, and, before central heating, in people who huddled near potbellied stoves to stay warm.

There's more at the link.

The report notes that the underside of a laptop computer can produce temperatures of up to 125° Fahrenheit (about 51.7° Centigrade). I'm not surprised that this can produce skin and other problems. My mom used to put roasts of meat into the oven overnight, at very low temperatures. We called it 'slow cooking', and it did precisely that - cooked meat slowly, but to a turn. Why, then, are people surprised at the side-effects when they slow-cook their own bodies by prolonged exposure to the heat from their computers? Are people really so dumb that they don't realize this is what they're doing?

Sheesh . . .





Peter