Cancer risk
Research has not turned up convincing evidence that using a laptop directly on your lap could cause cancer.
The main reason for reassurance is that laptops rely on a non-ionizing form of radiation at low energy. (That includes the radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, that laptops use to connect to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.) This radiation is too weak to knock electrons out of atoms, a process called ionization that can harm tissue and DNA. At such low-level radiation, laptops lack the energy to break chemical bonds inside our bodies or directly damage DNA.
“There is no established mechanism” for them to cause cancer, says Maria Feychting, a cancer epidemiologist at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
In this way, laptops are comparable to other low-energy devices like microwaves. “Most of the radiation stays inside the microwave, so risk is very unlikely” even when standing close to them, says Martin Roosli, a professor of environmental epidemiology at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel. “It’s the same for laptops.”