“Unexplained rash? Check your iPad,” Lindsey Tanner reports for The Associated Press. “It turns out the popular tablet computer may contain nickel, one of the most common allergy-inducing metals.”
“Recent reports in medical journals detail nickel allergies from a variety of personal electronic devices, including laptops and cellphones,” Tanner reports. “But it was an Apple iPad that caused an itchy body rash in an 11-year-old boy recently treated at a San Diego hospital, according to a report in Monday’s Pediatrics.”
“Doctors tested the device and detected a chemical compound found in nickel in the iPad’s outside coating,” Tanner reports. “‘He used the iPad daily,’ she said. He got better after putting it in a protective case, she said.”
Read more in the full article here.
“Doctors tested the device and detected a chemical compound found in nickel in the iPad’s outside coating,” Tanner reports.
Nickel is an element. If you’re finding compounds in nickel, it’s time to go back to Chemistry 101.
*snap* You beat me to it.
LOTS of people these days would flunk out of high school chemistry. Perhaps even most people. Let’s get stupid people!
It can be dissolved using 37% strong hydrochloric acid 🙂
And yet nickel plating is used on student flutes for those kids with a reaction to silver?
Here we go again bashing Apple because of the possibility of nickel. All of a sudden this comes up? Come on now. I suffer from allergies and nickel is one of them when I put a cheap pair of costume earrings on. Nothing has ever happened to me with an Apple product. Of course there are people who have allergies but for the this article to come up now? Maybe the kid eats to much chocolate too another known source of causing rashes in people.
Nickel allergies are fairly common. Silver (at least the quality used in musical instruments), not hardly as much. In either case, gold plating is the most common remedy. Not a big deal to purchase a flute with a good plated embouchure plate as an option, or to have it plated later. It’s basically used as a cover…just like an ipad case. If Apple is using nickel in its alloys or in some other sort of covering substance, though, they should probably stop.
detected a chemical compound found in nickel in the iPad’s outside coating,”
Nickel is an element. A metallic element. It does not contain “compounds” which are combinations of elements. Nickel alloys are mixtures of nickel and other metallic elements like copper. Nickel is most common in coins. Silver coloured coins where an alloy of nickel, copper and other elements is used to give the appearance of silver with durability and without the cost of the precious metal. Even if the story is true and some individuals are sensitive to nickel or nickel alloys then the reporters utter ignorance of science discredits his/her report and those who have this sensitivity have a far greater issue to deal with than iPad use… They shouldn’t touch/handle change. I suspect a case of selective interpretation (beat-up). The Dr.
The allergy occurs from prolonged skin contact to metal. (e.g. metals found in jewelry, watches, eyeglass frames, etc.) and a couple other conditions occuring simulteneously. I doubt any metal allergy has ever occurred from handling change in pockets or during payment.
Put a case on the iPad. Done.
AND THUS WAS BORN…
HOLISTIC COMPUTING.
Consult your shaman before buying ANY computing device or accessory. Your health is at stake! 😀
I can’t wait for Jenny McCarthy to tell everyone that the iPad causes autism.
That’s okay, there are plenty of autism apps.
“Journalists jump on another Apple rumor” would be a better headline.
Nickel usually produces a contact dermatitis. Systemic reactions, such as this appears to be, are less common.
The article itself was just published today. It’s just a case presentation and you have to pay $12 to read the article itself. I suspect most journalists are not qualified to interpret the science in the article, if they have even read it.
The specific cause of a systemic reaction can be very difficult to pinpoint with accuracy. Even if the authors somehow “tested” the iPad, that doesn’t establish it as the cause of the rash. If the iPad was the source of the dermatitis, why didn’t he develop a contact dermatitis on his hands prior to developing the rash?
I would think he would have had to ingest quite a bit of nickel (relatively speaking) to develop a systemic rash.
This article may be an example of over-exhuberant drive among academic physicians to “puclish or perish.”
I have heard that a few conditions have to simultaneously happen for metal allergies to occur. 1) skin sweat while in prolonged contact with metal (this allows metal ions to be absorbed into the bloodstream through the skin) 2) the body must be fighting an infection by external bacterial via cuts/scrapes (this triggers white blood cells to be created to fight the infection which also identifies the metal ions as an invader). If this occurs at a frequency where the ‘trained’ white blood cells are created faster than needed to handle the actual infection, the excess white blood cells will trigger more to be created when only the metal ion is detected in the future.
What ‘outside coating’ would that be, exactly? The alloy casing is anodised, the front is glass, neither, AFAIK, contain any nickel.
I say this is more meeja bullshit.
I’m not surprised that some tabloid types jumped on this story. Until we can see the actual article in Pediatrics,
it’s difficult to judge the validity if the two dermatologists’ conclusions.
the iPad back may contain traces of nuts, not nickel.
Yeh, such sensitivity exists. But this article is so empty of any rigor, it’s laughable… and not worth replying to. I just want to support Sam’s insight that it is more likely to be the traces of peanut. Although it could also be Elvis or transmissions by aliens trying to get in touch with the kid.