This is off the business topic, but it certainly is a major issue for all of us who work from home, especially Macbook Pro users. You see, I love my new laptop but it has a few particularities. It runs 3x hotter than my PC - so hot, in fact, that I have a hard time working with it on my lap. Normally, it would not be that big a deal. That is until Julie & I decided to start trying to have children (I’m told this is definitely the best part).

On the drive to San Francisco today, Peter & I began to wonder if the radiation or heat from my laptop could roast my nads cause me to have three headed children fertility troubles. A little research online and it appears that, yes, this might just be an issue. So all you guys who work like we do and who want to have kids some day, pay attention.

The study of 29 men in their 20s and 30s by the Stony Brook group found that keeping a laptop on the lap for an hour can raise scrotal temperatures by more than 2.5 degrees Celsius, enough to affect fertility significantly, said a report in the Dec. 9 issue of the European Journal Human Reproduction.

Now my reaction on reading this was that if a 5 degree temperature change really made all that much difference, then no one in Fresno or anywhere in the Central Valley would ever conceive, so its probably total garbage.

Then I on went on Ask.com (a little plug for a new client) and was sent to a 1999 study in the United States that showed even seasonal temperature changes had a major effect on male fertility. Sperm production dropped by 41 percent in the summer as compared to winter, the study found, while sperm speed decreased and the number of defective sperm increased as the weather got hotter. So maybe temp really does matter.

Looked a little harder ,and it seems like laptops are not the only worry. Cellphones are a real concern as well. Naturally, I’m wondering how radiation in my right ear affects my fertility???

Between September 2004 and October 2005, a total of 364 males were evaluated by researchers from Cleveland Clinic, the Tulane University Health Sciences Center, and the Karthekeya Medical Research and Diagnostic Center in Mumbai. The study found that men who use their mobile devices for more than four hours per day were far more likely to have problems with sperm viability that could lead to infertility problems. Source: News.com

The Department of Health says that the first laptop study is not conclusive and that other experts disagree. This is pretty understandable since all experts like to disagree on principle. I’ll point out that two and a half years later, I have yet to see a single study that says having your box sitting on top of your sperm factory lap all day has no major mutating clinical affect on your testes.

So if you ask me, and you want kids like we do, as the famous West Side Story song goes:

Boy, boy, crazy boy,
Get cool, boy!
Got a rocket in your pocket,
Keep coolly cool, boy!
Don’t get hot,
‘Cause man, you got
Some high times ahead.
Take it slow and Daddy-O,
You can live it up and die in bed!