Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Mobiles cut sperm count, says report

From: NEXTEL-1
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 15:50:49 -0400

New Study Suggests Mobile Phones May Harm Sperm Counts Contributed by Mike Masnick on Monday, June 28 2004 @ 3:30am Fear of brain tumors may not scare off many mobile phone users, but will decreased fertility? A new study coming out of Hungary suggests that heavy mobile phone use and/or carrying around a phone in your pants pockets may do damage to a man's sperm. Of course, just like every other study on the health effects of mobile phone radiation, this one is being disputed (loudly) by those who question the study's methods and point out that other studies disagree.

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Mobiles cut sperm count, says report

Sarah Boseley in Berlin
Monday June 28, 2004
The Guardian
Men who carry mobile phones in their trouser pockets may be at
risk of damaging their sperm count, according to research by
Hungarian scientists.

Full details of the study will be formally presented at the
European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology
conference in Berlin tomorrow. Early reports of the Hungarian
work attracted scepticism from other scientists who pointed to
the contradictory results of other work on the subject.

Imre Fejes and colleagues from the department of obstetrics and
gynaecology at the University of Szeged in Hungary studied the
mobile phone use and sperm counts of 221 men over a
13-month period. They asked the men how long they had owned
a mobile phone and for how many hours they carried it about
their person in standby mode, as well as how long they spent in
calls every day. They drew comparisons between those who
used their phones a lot and non-users.

Heavy users of mobile phones had sperm counts that were up to
30% lower than those who did not have or use a mobile at all,
the scientists say. They found that not only did using the phone
affect a man's sperm count and the motility (speed of
movement) of the sperm, but simply having it switched on in a
pocket was enough to do damage. Mobile phones periodically
but briefly transmit information to radio masts to establish
contact.

"The prolonged use of cell phones may have negative effect on
spermatogenesis and male fertility, that presumably deteriorates
both concentration and motility," say the Hungarian team in the
abstract produced for the conference. "Further controlled
randomised studies are necessary to precise the correlation
coefficients."

But the study is small and its findings do not sit well with the
bulk of evidence so far on the health hazards of mobile phones.

No conclusive impact on sperm count or motility has been found
by other scientists to date.

Hans Evers, a past chairman of ESHRE from the Academic
hospital in Maastricht in the Netherlands, said any conclusions
as to the meaning of the study should wait until scientists have
been able to digest the full presentation of the results. "This
research is interesting but raises more questions than it
answers," he said.

"It is an observational as opposed to interventional study, which
appears not to take into account the many potential confounding
factors which could have skewed the results. For example, what
if heavy mobile phone users in Hungary have particularly
stressful lives and jobs? What if they come from a different age
group or social class than the non-users? These factors would
have a considerable effect on the outcome of the research, but it
is not possible to tell from the abstract whether this has been
taken into consideration."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1248645,00.html

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