Delicately proping your laptop on your legs for a prolonged period can cause the skin perminant damage and discolouration, in rare cases it can even cause cancer doctors have warned. The high temperatures that laptop computers can kick out can cause a stingging nettle like rash known as ‘toasted skin syndrome’.
This is a condition that use to be previlent well before the computer age when people huddled around electric heaters and open fires to keep warm, now it is hitting back at the laptop generation.
A 12 year old boy developed a mottled pattern on his legs in a case discovered recently. His skin showed significant discolouration on his left leg (the side of the computer that got the hotest) after playing on his computer for a couple of hours most days for several months.
‘He recognised the laptop would be getting hot however regardless of that he didn’t change its position on his lap,’ Swiss researchers wrote in a medical journal Pediatrics.
In other cases doctors have been stumpt by the condition until they realise that their patients their laptops for hours on end every day. The temperature of the underside of a laptop can reach upwards of 52 degrees celius and can cause a skincondition that is similar.
Toasted Skin Syndrome is in most cases completely harmless, although it can cause a perminent skin darkening. In very rare cases, damage can be cause that may lead to skin cancers, said the Swiss researchers, Andeas Arnold and Peter Itin of the University Hospital Basel.
So whats the best method of keeping your lap, legs and knees cool when you need to use your laptop computer for long time, whether you’re having to meet that tight work deadline or pulling an all nighter to get that last university assignment handed on on time.
Take a look at the LapRest laptop platform a lightweight and portable device designed to provide you with better stability and comfort when using your laptop away from your desk or directly on your legs. It’ll keep you and your laptop running at a much more comfortable temperature.