related article:Warning: laptops can affect your sperm count
December 9, 2004 - 12:23PM
Source: SMH
Teenagers and young men should keep their laptops off their laps because they could damage fertility, according to new research.
Laptops, which reach high internal operating temperatures, can heat up the scrotum which could affect the quality and quantity of men's sperm.
"The increase in scrotal temperature is significant enough to cause changes in sperm parameters," said Dr Yefim Sheynkin, an associate professor of urology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
"It is very difficult to predict how long the computer can be used safely," he told Reuters. "It may not be at all, if the testicular temperature goes up high within a very short period of time."
Adolescents and young men who use laptops several times a day over many years face the greatest risk. Sheynkin fears that if laptop use is not curtailed, in 15-20 years when they want to start a family the men could face problems.
"Long-term use may have a detrimental effect on their reproductive health," he said.
Sheynkin and his team studied the impact of using a laptop on 29 healthy volunteers between the age of 21-35 by measuring scrotal temperature before and after they used a computer on their lap.
The research is reported in the journal Human Reproduction.
Even without turning the laptop on, the scrotal temperature rose by 2.1 degrees Celsius when the young men sat with their thighs together to balance the computer on their lap.
When they switched it on the temperature rose - by 2.8 degrees on the right side and 2.6 degrees on the left.
"It shows that scrotal hyperthermia is produced by both special body posture and the local heating effect of laptop computers," Sheynkin said.
A serious case of laptop burn was reported in a letter published in a medical journal two years ago after a 50-year-old man burned his penis while using a laptop balanced on his legs for an hour, despite wearing trousers and underpants.
The researchers used two different brands of computers in the study.
"All laptop computers generate significant heat due to the increasing power requirements of computer chips. New laptops with higher power requirements may produce even more heat," Sheynkin added.
Laptop burns boffin's penis
November 22 2002
Source: SMH
Doctors are warning that laptop computers may inflict a burn even through clothed skin, after the bizarre case of a Swedish scientist who scorched his penis and testicles while writing a report in his armchair.
The unnamed 50-year-old father of two had balanced the computer on his lap while he wrote the report at home, taking about an hour to do it, according to a letter published in the next issue of the British medical weekly The Lancet.
The following day, he started to develop painful blisters on his foreskin and scrotum, which became infected but eventually cleared up without the need for antibiotics.
Laptop manuals usually advise users not to use the computer while its base is resting directly on exposed skin, as heat can build up if the device is left on for a long time.
In this case, however, the patient had been wearing trousers and underpants.
The tale "should be taken as a serious warning against use of a laptop computer, in a literal sense," said the letter's author, Claes-Goran Ostenson of the department of molecular medicine at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute.