Fertility study builds buzz around cellphones

 By Rita Rubin, USA TODAY, Februrary 28, 2008

Cellphones emit radiofrequency electromagnetic waves. Scientists have reported potential adverse effects of the waves on the brain, heart, endocrine system and DNA, Agarwal, director of the andrology lab at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and his co-authors write in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

Agarwal's team studied 361 men under 40 who were being evaluated for infertility; men whose personal or family history might explain a low count or other sperm abnormalities were excluded.

The scientists divided the patients into four groups, based on how long they said they talked on a cellphone each day. Then they analyzed the men's semen and found a strong association between length of time spent on a cellphone and sperm count and quality. Those who talked more than four hours a day had lower counts and more poor "swimmers" and abnormally formed sperm.

One reason could be the heat generated by the phones; sperm production is sensitive to temperature, Agarwal says.

The researchers didn't ask the men about other potential sources of electromagnetic wave exposure, like laptop computers, or where the men usually kept the phone when they talked. Next to their ear? In a pocket while using a headset? Says Agarwal: "There are hundreds of variables that can affect our conclusions."

Location, location, location makes a big difference, says British infertility specialist Iwan Lewis-Jones, who, like Agarwal, is conducting laboratory studies of cellphones' impact on sperm specimens. "To get an effect, I think you've got to have the phone very close to the sperm."

In research still ongoing, Agarwal says, he has found that sperm quality decreases in semen specimens left sitting next to a phone in talk mode for as little as an hour. Lewis-Jones says he isn't ready to report results from his research, in which phones in talk mode are left next to semen specimens.

"We are not saying that mobile phones affect fertility," he says. "All we're trying to do is see what effect they have on the sperm cell." In other words, he says, changes seen in laboratory experiments probably are not occurring in real life.

The only way to answer that question definitively, he says, is to randomly assign men to use a cellphone or not. But, he says, considering "I don't know anybody who hasn't got a mobile phone now," few men would volunteer to go without one.

READERS: Do you think you'll use your cellphone differently after learning about this study?

 Source: USA TODAY