Never mind the radiation: fear the cell phone's nickel

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081021-never-mind-the-radiation-fear-the-cell-phones-nickel.html




As the popularity of cell phones has increased, so has the attention paid to fears that they pose unseen health risks. Attention has been focused on the electromagnetic radiation that powers their communications with cell phone towers, although there is no mechanism known by which this could trigger a dangerous biological response. Despite the focus on radiation, the British Association of Dermatologists (which proudly uses the acronym BAD) would like to remind everyone that there apparently is a health risk associated with cell phone use: contact allergies.

Although nickel is widely used, it's largely harmless in the solid forms; even soluble nickel salts are only toxic if ingested in quantities of a gram or more. But a subset of the population is apparently sensitive to extended periods of skin contact with nickel. No less a health authority than the Mayo Clinic calls nickel allergies "one of the most common causes of allergic contact dermatitis." Mostly, this causes a problem when people wear jewelry that includes nickel, but other routes of exposure have been described in the literature, including a case where an unfortunate trumpet player was exposed through his instrument.



BAD cites a recent study that appeared in the open access journal CMAJ, which described the symptoms caused by repeated cell phone use in an 18-year-old male. After a nasty reaction to a belt buckle tipped his doctors off to his nickel allergy, they suspected a cell phone might be responsible for some corresponding dermatitis on his face. Sure enough, the surface of his cell phone had small amounts of free nickel present. Tests of about 20 cell phones showed that roughly half had free nickel, in places ranging from the buttons to the decorative logos.

BAD was able to track down a number of other studies, such as one in Contact Dermatitis, that described similar reactions to nickel in cell phones.

According to the dermatologists, nickel allergies may affect as many as 30 percent of the UK's population, and incidence may be rising. Exposure to nickel from other routes, such as jewelry, can heighten the sensitivity, setting people up to react badly when they press a cell phone up to their face. BAD also warns that extreme texters might wind up seeing nasty rashes appearing on their fingertips.

Mostly, BAD seems to want doctors to be aware that this could be the cause of some of the rashes they're seeing. "It is worth doctors bearing this condition in mind if they see a patient with a rash on the cheek or ear that cannot otherwise be explained," stated BAD spokesman Dr. Graham Lowe.

I'm thinking this may be showing up in a future Apple advertising campaign. The fact that the iPhone's nearly featureless glass surface isn't likely to cause a rash is clearly a selling point that differentiates it from the pack.

CMAJ, 2008. DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.071233