Guys, you may want to keep that laptop at a safe distance. A new study finds that laptops using WiFi may damage sperm, Reutersreports. Scientists put drops of healthy men’s semen under a laptop downloading data; after four hours, a quarter of the sperm had stopped swimming. Only 14% of sperm kept away from the computer did the same. Meanwhile, 9% of sperm under the computer had DNA damage, some three times more than the control sperm.
The Argentine researchers blame electromagnetic radiation from the wireless Internet. Without WiFi, there was no significant change in the sperm. But an expert warns not to get too worked up over the findings. “This is not real-life biology. This is a completely artificial setting,” he says. “It is scientifically interesting, but to me it doesn’t have any human biological relevance.” No studies have actually examined the effect of laptop use on fertility and pregnancy, he notes.
