New York (PTI): An Indian American
fertility expert has warned men that keeping their cell phones in
pockets and belts while talking on hands-free could affect their
fertility.
In a study published September 19 in
the online version of Journal of Fertility and Sterility, Ashok
Agarwal, lead author, says men who keep their cell phones in their
pockets or clip them to their belts while using an ear piece to chat
may be compromising their sperms.
In an interview with Newsweek news
magazine, he rejected the suggestion that the researchers have debunked
the idea that use of cell phones leads to impotence.
"That's not true. We still have
questions that haven't been answered. And there are still more
questions to ask," he said, adding that his study was designed to
examine whether exposure to radio-frequency electromagnetic waves from
cell phones would cause any kind of changes in human sperm.
An earlier study conducted on some 361
men, he said, had found a significant relationship between cell-phone
use and sperm quality, especially among men who used mobiles for more
than four hours per day. "We wanted to find out what was going on," he
added.
The researchers, he said, took sperm
samples from 23 healthy men, and from nine men with known fertility
issues. The samples were then divided into two portions to make a
control group and a test group.
"We exposed the test group sperm to a
cell phone in "talk" mode with a radiation of 850 megahertz, the
frequency most often used by cell phones in the US."
"We exposed the sperm for about one
hour to see if there was any effect on the sperm quality in exposed and
unexposed portions," he told Newsweek.
The researchers, he said, looked at several markers, including mobility, viability and cellular or molecular changes.
"There were 85 percent more free
radicals generated by the exposed sperm samples in both healthy and
infertile specimens versus the control group, and a 6 percent decrease
in antioxidants in the exposed samples, the chemicals that fight
free-radical damage", he said.
"Motility, or what proportion of sperm
are moving, decreased by 7 percent, and the viability, or the
percentage of sperm that is alive decreased by 11 percent.
"That was for both groups, the healthy
men and men with fertility problems, as compared to a control group
that had no exposure," he added.
Relying to a question, he said, the study is preliminary and the results need to be validated with a larger sample size.
"The next step is to obviously take a
look at the muscles, fat and tissues that separate the testes from this
exposure. We're building a very sophisticated computer model that will
mimic real-time cell-phone use.
Essentially, we want to re-create with
a computer model exactly how men use their cell phones and how it may
affect their fertility," he added.
"Asked where he keeps his cell phone,
Agarwal replied in his pant pocket. But he does not use a hand-free
device. So the phone is a standby mode."
"We're not sure if a cell phone in
standby mode could cause damage to sperm because we don't know for sure
the minimum amount of radiation that may induce damage to sperm cells.
There are a host of things that we don't know at this time, he said.
From : http://www.hindu.com/
