Your favourite high-tech gadgets could actually kill you, if scientists are to be believed. According to a new study, mobile phones, tablets and laptops could cause skin cancer by reflecting the sun’s harmful UV rays.
Researchers have also advised that one should wear sunscreen, sunglasses and even cover their faces and necks if using one’s phone outside. Although the tests were carried out mannequins rather than people, this finding is touted to have raised an important practical point.
Mary Logue from the University of Mexico, who is also the co-author of the study, says that, “These devices are generally used for communication or entertainment, so it can be easy to overlook their reflective properties unless you happen to catch the glare off a screen,” as reported by the Daily Mail.
Ms. Logue’s team set up a mannequin head wearing a UVA/B light metre and positioned it towards a standard musician’s sheet music stand. After that they placed various mobile devices on the stand. The researchers recorded UV readings for an hour f exposure, from 11am to noon during two trails. They used different types of devices like an iPhone5, various iPad models, two Macbook laptops, Kindle e-reader and even a magazine for the experiment.
“Significant levels of UV exposure, such as those found in this study, increase cumulative lifetime UV dosage,” Ms. Logue was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.
This study was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
