Consult a doctor / hope some read your blog?

Wouldn't using a nice bluetooth wireless keyboard in your lap serve much the same purpose, if you had a desktop?

Maybe you could just put a little bracer in the back of something--I don't know what would fit on the macbook, I'm imagining the 9 cell battery model for my dell m1330--that would lift it up and give it some breathing space between the machine and lap.

Hope it turns out OK, mysterious technology induced injuries are no fun.

now you know why they're called notebooks. hope it clears up.

danah- there's a number of different products out there which you can place on your lap in between your lap and your Mac so this doesn't continue or get worse. Please put some insulation (that still allows for air circulation for the machine) in between you and the machine.

All sorts of low to mid heat generating devices can cause low grade burns such as this. You need to be careful with *any* laptop or device that will heat beyond 110 F. or so and comes into extended contact with your skin. I used to have to be very careful with transdermal recording devices back when I did more clinically oriented research and move the devices every hour or so because they heated the skin to obtain recordings.

I would suggest using a book or dedicated device that shunts or insulates the heat from your laptop when using it for extended periods of time. My guess is that the "burn" will actually go away in a couple of weeks. Not to worry.

I'm also a MacBook laptop burn victim, and upon reading your post immediately ran to the bathroom to check the status of my leg. ;)

It's been about two months since I first noticed the burn and stopped sitting my laptop on my lap, and I can barely notice where the burn was now. I'm not entirely sure how long it took to disappear, but I do know it was longer than a week (I want to say it was closer to 3 or 4 weeks, but I don't have a clear memory because I just started ignoring it.)

That said, I doubt you have any long term damage. It just takes some time for the blotchiness to go away.

The legs of females are often insufficiently vascularized. This is the cause of cellulite. Regions lacking veins would also lack innervation, preventing heat detection in the same regions that lack heat export and causing an inconsistent erythema.

danah, I honestly wish I could do better than wish you well. Don't freak out, these burns should eventually go away, give it some time. Or, well, sue Apple.

ahhh, i can't believe that happened to you! what i could better believe is if it branded you with an apple sign for marketing purposes...yes that i could better, possibly, believe.

Hi Danah, sorry to ear that from you. The only thing I can do is giving you an advice: this laptop support from Ikea http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80115790 should prevent you from getting any other burns and improve air circulation. My best wishes of a quick recovery.

If you have a case or wrap for your computer, pop that on your lap then put your machine on top. This should at least provide a little more protection from heat.

From your description of the affected area as "blotchy," it sounds like it may not be a burn at all, but rather a rash. At the risk of getting too personal and squicky, you might have an extremely mild case of miliaria, which is caused when sweat glands become clogged with oils or dead cells. It's extremely common.

In the worst case, you might end up with a superficial skin infection (probably Staph) that will need to be treated with topical antibiotics, but from your description it sounds like you just need to keep the area clean and dry so it can get better all by itself.

Give the area good, regular scrubbings with soap and warm water, and find someplace else to put your laptop for a while.

danah, it's such a relief to find you writing about your laptop burn.

The same thing happened to me. I work sitting one leg crossed over the other, my laptop balanced on one thigh. At first it was just an itch, a slight irritation. I thought that I was developing a skin rash, an allergic response to soap, shower gel or something similar. I even wondered about the washing powder we were using. Then the penny dropped.

The problem is, that the burn (for that's what it is) develops slowly. My white Macbook isn't that hot to touch, it feels pleasantly warm and you wouldn't think that it could cause damage, but it does. It seems to me that the burn grows over time. It's not like touching a flame or a hot plate. Its more of a stealth burn. After several hours work it can become painful, reminding me that its time to have a rest or swap legs! As time goes by I have noticed that my thigh has become more sensitive and as a result the length of time I spend per leg has shrunk. And yes, now prompted by you I've looked and I can see the dreaded red blotch.

I suspect that the damage, for that's what it is is serious and needs to be respected. It feels more significant than sun burn, it feels deeper if that makes sense.

I know the solutions are simple.

I need to stop putting the laptop on my lap, change my posture, get a lap seat thing, sit at a desk, use an asbestos blanket, spend time wondering about why they are called laptops, spend less time working, spend more time off the net.

But it's not that simple, that's not how I work.

Help....... I'm addicted to my laptop.

danah,
i got a similar burn from my macbook. it went away after a week or two.

http://www.applemacbook.com/gallery/81-cooking-on-the-macbook-definitely-fake/

I used to think that ^ photo is a joke. Not anymore!

I've been using a Podium CoolPad from Road Tools as a base for my Mac laptop and love it. It has a swivel feature and the ability to adjust height and slant. Its lightweight as well.

I get the same thing from this windoze laptop I use -- except that it actually does get uncomfortably hot, which is a Good Thing or I'd be slow-cooking my thighs daily (why yes, computer addict here).

There's some research on prolonged use of low-to-medium temperature heating pad use, which I suppose could be a source of applicable data:

From http://www.ampainsoc.org/pub/bulletin/win05/inno1.htm
"Prolonged use of an electric heating pad on one area of the body, in addition to being inconvenient, may cause a severe burn, even if the pad is set at a low to medium temperature (Bill, Edlich, & Himel, 1994)."
Bill, T.J., Edlich, R.F., & Himel, N.H. (1994). Electric heating pad burns. Journal of Emergency Medicine, 12, 819�824.

danah, I'm no expert, but isn't Bluetooth (like wifi) a low-power form of microwave energy? I've seen warnings that wifi routers put out quite a bit of energy close to the routers themselves. Do you think it possible that using something like a Bluetooth mouse might present a similar problem?

Just a thought.

I have been going crazy wondering what could be wrong with me. I developed these white spots that are very itchy just above my knees where my laptop sits. I thought maybe it was skin cancer and showed it to several people who had skin cancer and all say that what I have does not look like skin cancer. Last night I started thinking...is it the laptop because my Mac is so so hot, but I never thought it would do any damage. Well, I did a google search and found this site. I guess my problem is a result of my Mac. I have a pillow on my lap right now, but I can feel the heat and burning.... I have used so many creams on my legs, but nothing was clearing up this rash! Now I know it's the laptop....I will have to find something to put under the laptop...this huge pillow doesn't work!

I too have the same burn on my leg resulting from the use of my macbook. It has been there for months and will not go away even when I don't use my laptop of a few days. I thought I was the only one.

I'm a 39-year old female. I've been using my powerbook at
home for 4+ hours on my lap each day, and have developed a
similar blotchy pattern on my dominant laptop leg. It looks
the way skin looks when circulation returns to it irregularly
- as if you just had something sit on it, except that thas
normally goes away in a few minutes, and this one doesn't.

It doesn't actually itch, it doesn't hurt, and it's starting
to kinda sorta fade a little after a few weeks of using a
tray instead. I thought it was some sort of sweat-induced fungal infection at first and started treating it with Chlorimazole,
but from the descriptions here, that was irrelevant.

I'm surprised to not see this as Powerbookitis in the
literature!

Thanks for posting about this - it's nice to hear that it's
likely to go away over time, because it's freaking me out just
a little bit.

my left leg is burning as I write...
My laptop is killing my legs too, it gets so hot that it just shuts down itself.
My leg is red pretty much all over from the knee up like a sunburn because i move the laptop around every few mins because it burnsss.
I get a burning sensation as soon as I put the laptop on them, the burn feels so deep that it hurts to the touch,

From now on no more LAPtop, just BEDtop or whatever works.

Thanks for the info, I am going to look into the cooling pads.

arba

Hello,

I, too, have the burn on my left leg. It is splotchy and hasn't gone away in two months now. I had no idea that this was happening until it showed up on my leg and I googled to see if anyone had heard about leg burns from laptops. What is going on with this and has there been any resolution?

allison

I too have the black MacBook and my partner has the white MacBook. We were sitting here at home today , both on our Macbooks, and we were both scratching our hands and fingers. This has been going on for awhile now and just today I asked him if he thought it was our computers. All day we had been fine and than we started working on our computers and our hands start itching and our legs were also itching when we had the computer on our laps. We have since moved our computer to small table tops next to us but our hands continue to itch and burn when we are on them. Does anyone else have itchy hands when using their Macs?

I got a burn from my 17 inch Macbook Pro on Sunday night that was so bad it raised huge blisters.

It was sitting on my bare legs, and I could feel it getting uncomfortably hot on my thighs, but it gets hot a lot, and I have a pretty high pain tolerance, and I didn't know it could get hot enough to actually burn, so I just figured I could stick it out for a while longer. Then when I moved the laptop away (about 3 am, after an hour of use), there were three raised white welts with tiny blisters along the middles and red in between them on my left leg, and three red stripes on my right leg.

Over the course of the next few hours the blisters kept getting bigger and bigger. By 4 am they were huge and filled with yellow fluid. I had to wear loose yoga pants to work Monday because jeans would have chafed to much. You could see the bumps of the blisters even with the pants on.

I took a snap shot of the burn with Photo Booth: http://tpettit.best.vwh.net/images/laptop_burn.jpg

I wish they would have some kind of thermometer inside with a warning on screen that it was getting hot enough to burn.

I have a compaq, and I think its burnt my left leg (where the heat comes out of the bottom of the laptop) also. Its all red and blotchy.. doesnt hurt, just looked odd and it wont go away. Does anyone have it on just one leg? like their left??

Ladies & gentlemen,

My name's Daniel and I'm a journalist over at Tech Digest and I've just reviewed a really good laptop pillow. I haven't played with it myself but because it's made of a lattice structure it looks like it'd work. It allows the air to flow between your computer and your legs.

I haven't got a price from the Canadian manufacturers yet but I'll let you know when they get back to me. Take a look.

http://techdigest.tv/2008/04/_i_just_stumble.html

Daniel.

I'm sorry some people don't believe you. I certainly do as I have experienced the same thing. I think that people have trouble understand how one can receive a burn unnoticed. I think that what happens is that the repeated use of the laptop in the same place creates a cumulative effect. This isn't a 'normal' burn in the sense that one touches something extremely hot and then immediately reacts. This is more along the lines of the frog in the pot of water - turn the heat up slowly and the frog never notices that its getting burned alive.

My own burn healed in about a month. I was afraid it would stay forever, afraid that I had, perhaps, 'cooked' my veins. However, this was not the case and the wound did heal.

Now that I know what happens I keep something between my leg and the laptop and/or if I am in a place where I haven't this luxury (flying, etc.) then I make sure to move the laptop to different places on my legs to avoid the subtle frying. :-)

Just an update on my laptop burn: it is eight weeks later, and the scabs on the burn on my left leg finally fell off about a week ago (and no, I did not ever pick at it.) The scars are still dark red, and it is obvious that at least one of them, from the largest blister, will last the rest of my life, although I imagine after about a year it will fade to white. (I already have a long scar across the back of my calf that I got at age 13 which has lasted 40 years, and this one from the laptop burn looks to be just as deep, although much shorter.)

So this was definitely a real burn.

Some of my friends tell me I should sue Apple, but I think that's silly. I would, however, really like to raise the awareness of this danger. There must already be sensors in the computer that monitor the temperature. How hard could it be to make software that would read them and display a warning to move your laptop to a surface allowing air flow when it reached a level capable of causing burns?

One night and a burn-
I always use my Macbook pro at my desk to work. However, since I am traveling and not at my desk I sat in bed checking email last night with my laptop propped on my legs. This morning I wondered why my left leg had a red mark across it. I picked up the laptop to check email this morning and felt my legs hurt when I propped it up again. When I looked I saw that I had blisters on the mark on my left leg and just a red mark on my right leg. Pretty annoying! I guess it slowly heated up last night and cooked my leg without my notice. And, I don't have a lot of cellulite- I'm in good shape.