Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 15

calgaryherald.com WORLD Tuesday, July 15, 2014 B3 Rashes traced to iPad and devices, report finds (, W'v i t4 1 'rr AFPGetty ImagesFiles Among the players injured at this year's World Cup was Brazilian superstar Neymar, who broke his back in a match against Colombia. Soccer still culture war in U. S. LINDSEY TANNER The Associated press CHICAGO Unexplained rash? Check your iPad. It turns out the popular tablet computer may contain nickel, one of the most common allergy-inducing metals.

Recent reports in medical journals detail nickel allergies from a variety of personal electronic devices, including laptops and cellphones. But it was an Apple iPad that caused an itchy body rash in an u-year-old boy recently treated at a San Diego hospital, according to a report in Monday's Pediatrics. Nickel rashes aren't life-threatening but they can be very uncomfortable, and they may require treatment with steroids and antibiotics if the skin eruptions become infected, said Dr. Sharon Jacob, a dermatologist at Rady Children's Hospital, where the boy was treated. Jacob, who co-wrote the report, said the young patient had to miss school because of the rash.

The boy discussed in the Pediatrics report had a common skin condition that causes scaly patches, but he developed a different rash all over his body that didn't respond to usual treatment Skin testing showed he had a nickel allergy, and doctors traced it to an iPad his family had bought in 2010. Doctors tested the device and detected a chemical found in nickel in the iPad's outside coating. "He used the iPad daily," Jacob said. He got better after putting it in a protective case, she said. Whether all iPad models and other Apple devices contain nickel is uncertain.

People with existing nickel allergies are at risk for rashes from nickel-containing devices. "The length of time required to elicit an allergic reaction will vary from five or 10 minutes to never, depending on the sensitivity of the individual," the advisory says. COMMENT nobody ever gets hurt. So it's a sissy game and Americans are not sissies. (Among the seriously injured players at this year's World Cup was Brazil's star forward, Neymar, who broke his back in the game against Colombia.) Mostly, though, soccer is a game where you can't use your hands, which means no thumbs.

Thumbs are important to Coulter. They "set man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul," she says. Americans from sea to sea leaped at Coulter's bait. James Joyner, a professor at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College no less, became one of American soccer's strongest defenders. He wrote in The Hill publication Monday that if the country is going to hell because of the rising popularity of soccer it's going happily.

He noted the audience watching the U.S. tie Portugal out-drew the deciding games of the NBA and the World Series, and dwarfed the Stanley Cup finals. What's more, Americans kept watching at record numbers even after Team U.S.A. was eliminated. Will America's gradual embrace of a "liberal" sport force Coulter north to Canada, where Canadians elect Conservatives and didn't even qualify for the World Cup? She would certainly be at home with Canada's hockey madness.

It's a game she admires because you get "three or four fights a game and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour." But there's a problem. FIFA ticket sales show that Canadians bought more World Cup tickets 29,000 than any other nonqualifying country. So the same moral decay threatening America may be marching north. The World Cup may be sport's ugliest trophy, but it is still its most coveted prtee and for this reason alone America wants it. Pressure to be world No.

1 in everything trumps all other concerns including the fear of moral decline, they say. So expect the very best kickers of America to gather four years from now in World Cup 2018 in that communist homeland of Russia. Pressure mounts to be No. 1 in world's top sport WILLIAM MARSDEN Postmedia News WASHINGTON Every four years, according to the World Cup clock, the United States takes to the "beautiful game" like bees to honey and hope abounds that this latest burst of nationalist "futball" passions finally marks the breakout of American soccer. Americans knew something was up when conservative provocateur and full-time Republican sex symbol Ann Coulter chimed in last month with her usual highly incisive and learned take on the sport.

Soccer madness, she claimed, is changing America. To be precise, she called America's love affair with the World Cup "a sign of the nation's moral decay." Her reasoning? Soccer, she says in a recent column, is devoid of America's basic value of individual achievement. It denies the na tion the spectacle of heroic self-sacrifice and blubbering losers. It's an immigrant game, she noted. And that means liberals and socialists of every stripe are invading the U.S.

from Europe. "Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European," she wrote. She's not wrong, of course. In fact, she's dead accurate. Starting with U.S.

coach Jurgen Klinsmann German, of course the rest of the team is littered with imports from, well, Germany and a few other places. Given that the U.S. is a country of immigrants except for native Americans this shouldn't be a big surprise. The real problem facing U.S. soccer is that its athletic talent pool is distributed among football, basketball, baseball and hockey whereas in Germany everybody plays soccer.

Coulter fears soccer will water down America's homegrown sports. Coulter sees other signs that soccer is un-American. For starters, moms of the perpetually nervous type embrace it. It's coed serious sport is African-Americans don't play it and f0 1 CHEVROLET At f73S i i i 1 OMLY mmi JULY 31st YOU PAY WHAT WE PAY ON 2014 MODELS excludes Corvette EQUINOX LS FWD EMPLOYEE PRICE EMPLOYEE LEASE FROM $139 48 OR MONTHS EI-WEEKLY: INCLUDES S1.850 CASH CREDIT. FREIGHT POI LEASE EFFECTIVE RATE: 4.16 AT 2 9.

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