There's a long-standing, if unfair, stereotype that people who spend too much time on their computer might not ever get married and have a kid. But is there actual scientific proof to back up the second part? As first reported by Reuters, a study in the medical journal Fertility and Sterility seems to have found a link between laptop use and sperm count.
The study took samples of human semen from 29 healthy men, and placed drops underneath a laptop that was using wireless fidelity to enable a download. When examined, a quarter of the sperm was no longer moving, compared to 14 percent of the samples from a control group that was stored at the same temperature but not near a computer. Nine percent of the laptop sperm showed DNA damage, which is three times as much as the control group.
Fertility concluded that electromagnetic radiation produced by the laptop's wi-fi was responsible for the lowered sperm count. A second test found that computers that were turned on but not connected wirelessly had little radiation.
