Nickel Allergy From A Cell Phone

Nickel Allergy From A Cell Phone.
If you're an incessant apartment phone narcotic addict and a mysterious rash appears along your jaw, cheek or ear, chances are you're allergic to nickel, a metal commonly cast-off in cell phones. While allergists have hanker been familiar with nickel allergy, "cell phone rash" is just starting to show up on their radar screen, said Dr Luz Fonacier, steer of allergy and immunology at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, NY. "Increased use of cubicle phones with unlimited usage plans has led to prolonged jeopardy to the nickel in phones," said Fonacier, who is scheduled to discuss the condition in a larger conferral on skin allergies Nov 14, 2010 at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology annual conference in Phoenix.

Symptoms of cell phone allergy include a red, bumpy, itchy quantity in areas where the nickel-containing parts of a cell phone touch the face. It can even move fingertips of those who text continuously on buttons containing nickel. In severe cases, blisters and itchy sores can develop.

Fonacier said she sees many patients who are allergic to nickel and don't grasp it. "They come in with no suggestion of what is causing their allergic reaction," said Fonacier, also a professor of clinical pharmaceutical at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Sometimes, she traces her patients' symptoms to their stall phones.

In 2000, a researcher in Italy documented the first case of chamber phone rash, prompting other research on the condition. In a 2008 study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, US researchers tested for nickel in 22 handsets from eight manufacturers; 10 contained the metal. The parts with the most nickel were the menu buttons, decorative logos on the headsets and the metal frames around the transparent crystal flaunt (LCD) screens.

Cell phone madcap is still not well known, said allergist Dr Stanley M Fineman, a clinical allied professor at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. While he's treated more cases of nickel allergy caused by piercings than by room phones, "it's merit for allergists and dermatologists to have cell phone phone dermatitis on their radar screens".