Toasted Skin Syndrome

As if we don’t have enough to worry about, what with terrorists targeting maybe the Eiffel Tower or possibly Buckingham Palace or perhaps the Brandenburg Gate, alarm comes today from the Associated Press that a new threat is at the ramparts — “toasted skin syndrome.” Apparently, “people” (and I have to put that term in quotes) are using their laptop computers for hours at a time directly on their bare laps, resulting in TSS. One “12-year-old boy developed a sponge-patterned skin discoloration on his left thigh after playing computer games a few hours every day for several months.” He felt the heat on his thigh, but didn’t act to do anything about it, either too consumed in the concentration of play to take notice of the “sponge-patterned skin discoloration,” or perhaps just figured that pain was a special multi-dimensional feature of the games. But don’t dismiss the problem as confined to 12-year-old idiot boys. A Virginia law student has been treated for “mottled discoloration on her leg.” The case baffled her physician until she found out the student had been propping her 125-degree laptop on her bare legs for six hours a day. Let’s hope that’s recorded on her transcript, if not factored in her bar exam. We don’t need spontaneous combustion or seared flesh in the courtroom. The good news (buried, of course, in the AP story) is that there have only been ten reported cases of laptop injuries in the last six years, fewer than the injuries incurred by lap dancing. But still, it’s comforting that the press is keeping our well-being at the forefront. I can’t imagine the embarrassment of reading on my death certificate: “Cause of Death: Toasted Skin Syndrome.”