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Posts with tag: mobile-phones | Return to HealthNewsBlog.com Homepage
Study Links Cell Phone Use to Male Infertility
The Daily Mail reports that a recent study of cell phone users could mean that men who use cell phones are at an increased risk of infertility. The study found that men who use cell phones for over four hours a day had a 25% lower sperm count.
US researchers in Cleveland and New Orleans, and doctors in Mumbai, India, looked at more than 360 men undergoing checks at a fertility clinic who were classified into three groups according to their sperm count.
Men who used a mobile for more than four hours a day had a 25 per cent lower sperm count than men who never used a mobile.
The men with highest usage also had greater problems with sperm quality, with the swimming ability of sperm - a crucial factor in conception - down by a third.
They had a 50 per cent drop in the number of properly formed sperm, with just one-fifth looking normal under a microscope.
Professor Ashok Agarwal, director of the Reproductive Research Centre at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, who led the study, said "Almost a billion people are using cell phones around the world and the number is growing in many countries at 20 to 30 per cent a year.
The findings are alarming but a much broader and larger study will be need to verify the results. Four hours of cell phone use per day is also a considerable amount of cell phone use but apparently not uncommon since 114 of the 360 men in the study use their cell phones for four hours or more daily.
Posted on October 25, 2006
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Study: Mobile Phones Affect Brain Function
The AFP reports that a new study by scientists from Swinburne University of Technology's Brain Sciences Institute in Melbourne have found cellphones can affect brain function. They study of patients making a 30-minute phone call found a lower reaction time but increased memory.
The researchers conducted a series of psychological tests on 120 volunteers as they were exposed to mobile phone emissions for half an hour. Another set of tests was conducted on volunteers who were not exposed to mobile phone radiation but thought they were.
The results, published in April's edition of the journal Neuropsychologia, showed a small but discernable change in brain function among those who were exposed to the electromagnetic fields that mobile phones generate. "The study showed evidence of slower response times for participants undertaking simple reactions and more complex reactions, such as choosing a response when there is more than one alternative," lead researcher Con Stough said.
"This could equate to driving a car and being distracted by another car pulling out in front of you. The drivers reaction time to chose between braking, turning or sounding the horn, could be affected, albeit slightly." The study also found that radiation from mobile phones seems to improve working memory, used for example when remembering a phone number long enough to dial it. He said further work was needed using magnetic resonance imaging to clarify the way mobile phones alter on the way the brain works.
The study only focused on the single phone call so it did not measure the risk of long term mobile phone use. They only wanted to prove that cellphones can affect brain function. Con Stough, the lead researcher, told the AFP: "We're just showing that the radiation is actually active on the brain. But the impairment is small. The convenience and the way that we communicate now these days outweighs that effect."
Now if they would only do a follow-up study to see what causes those phantom cellphone rings.
Posted on May 5, 2006
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