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Save the Males! Keep Your Cell Phone Out of Your Pocket
Guest Blogger
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Dr. Devra Lee Davis, Environmental Health Trust:
Men looking to start their families can begin the effort by taking their cell phones out of their pockets and off their belts, as well as eating well and avoiding drugs, tobacco and alcohol.. a Studies in six different countries confirm, that regular mobile phone use can cut sperm count in half.
According to Dr. Devra Davis, President of Environmental Health Trust, “If you take two samples of sperm from the same man, and expose one to cell phone microwave radiation, the cell phone exposed sperm die three times faster and have many more markers of damage. A number of studies show that men that keep a phone in their pocket for over four hours per day have half the sperm count of others.”
Researchers from the renowned Cleveland Clinic discovered that keeping a cell phone on talk mode in a pocket can decrease sperm quality, "We believe that these devices are used because we consider them very safe, but it could cause harmful effects due to the proximity of the phones and the exposure that they are causing to the gonads," says lead researcher Ashok Agarwal, the Director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine in an interview with CNN.com.
In the small controlled study, Agarwal's team took semen samples from 32 men and brought them to the lab. Each man's sample was placed into small, conical tubes and divided into two parts: an exposed test group and an unexposed control group. The semen in the test group was placed one inch from an 850 MHz cell phone in talk mode for 1 hour. They used the measurement of an inch to mimic the distance between the trouser pocket and the testes. Agarwal reasoned that many men keep their active cell phones in their pants pocket while talking on their headsets.
Recent studies from Australia’s famed Research Council Center of Excellence, led by Laureate Professor John C. Aitken have also produced stunning laboratory studies confirming that cellphone exposed sperm have three times more DNA damage than unexposed sperm, and a much impaired chance to produce healthy offspring. Another similar study carried out by Dr Imre Fejes, from the University of Szeged in Hungary, studied 221 men over 13 months and compared the sperm of "very active" mobile users, who carried their handset for most of the day, with those who did not own a phone.
Dr Fejes found men who carried a phone on stand-by through the day had significantly lower sperm concentration. Their counts averaged at 59 million sperm per milliliter of seminal fluid compared with 83 million for men not continually exposed to mobile phone radiation.
Motility - the power of the sperm to swim - was similarly affected by mobile phone transmissions. Men who made lengthy calls had fewer rapidly motile sperm, 36.3 per cent compared with 51.3 per cent for men who made no calls.
Dr. Davis explains, “Fine print warnings that manufacturers include in packaging with today’s smart phones, like the iPhone 4 advise that phones can exceed the FCC guidelines if kept in the pocket, but few people are aware of this.”
“The best solution for men and humanity is to be aware of the dangers and keep these microwave-emitting devices out of the pocket and off the body!” advises Dr. Davis.
**Download the PDF for a larger version of the poster above. Compliments of Radiation Research Trust.
The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of
Healthy Child Healthy World.
Posted by paul on 02/08/2011 at 02:03 PM
Great idea Betsy…............ :s…. I am a man ... I don’t have a purse, ..... and why would I leave the phone in the car? The whole point of a cell phone would be defeated since its my only form of communication.. anyway Maybe one day they will invent sleeves or new holders that will prevent the radiation to come out…but also let signal in when and to receive calls… that would be cool if at all possible
Posted by Betsy (Eco-novice) on 02/07/2011 at 10:26 PM
Keep your phone in a bag. And if you aren’t taking a bag, keep it in the car. Or don’t take it with you. I almost never have pockets, and keep my phone in the car or my purse. But then i have a GoPhone, that I don’t use that much anyway. I am constantly reminding my husband not to keep his phone in his pocket/lap.
Posted by Jenn the Greenmom on 02/02/2011 at 08:54 PM
And my husband’s very practical question, “Okay, so where SHOULD we carry them, then? Closer to our heart, where it can do God-knows-what there?”
He has a point.
I suppose we’ve gone too far to go back to a life where not every person must be attached to a cell phone every minute. But…God, think about all those jr. high and high school boys, starting already, absolutely attached to their phones every waking moment for all those years. What will happen to their reproductive capability over time? (I’d love to know the answer to Paul’s question too…)
Posted by paul on 02/02/2011 at 04:36 AM
If cell phones have damaging effects on sperm, my question is, is it permanent? Or if I keep my phone at a distance will all be better and back to normal?
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Posted by Nico on 02/11/2011 at 10:15 AM
I had knowledge that on long term, keeping cellphones is bad for you (male or female) due to the waves they transmit, but i had no idea about it drastically reducing the amount of sperm.
Unlike me, my boyfriend doesn’t have a purse or a bag and if he keeps his iPhone in the laptop bag then 1. he may not hear it ring and 2. it’s easier to be stolen :( So I don’t really know what advice to give him.