Smelly MacBook Pros Not Good for You

Strong-smelling MacBook Pros have been discussed on Apple forums, but an anonymous French molecular biologist/researcher went to Greenpeace to check out why his smelled. Greenpeace got Analytica involved, and then Inéris, France's national institute covering the industrial environment.

Apparently benzene is a component of the smell, and this could be risky -- over time, sensitive people could develop leukemia.

Unconfirmed stories suggest the problem Mac Pros have been built in China, not at Apple's European factory.

Note, we're not talking about an ordinary "new equipment" aroma. The original poster at MacRumours said his new 3.0 Mac Pro Octo:
"Stinks to high heaven. It's a plastic-burning type smell, seems almost toxic, the smell coming out the back fan. I have to shut it down and leave the room every few hours to air it out, it's that bad. I've heard about the "new mac smell" and had a tiny taste of it with a new macbook last summer, but this is different -- it's intense, nauseating, and makes you feel funny. Friends and neighbors have agreed: this can't be good."

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