Another
reader has brought to our attention a fourth paper showing that GSM radiation can alter sleep.
James Horne and coworkers at the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University in the
U.K. have reported that very weak (0.133 W/Kg) signals can delay sleep onset.
The new work, published in June, raises some particularly important —and
thorny— issues regarding the biological effects of different ELF modulations on
the 900 MHz GSM pulses. We'll leave those for another time, but for now the
Loughborough study reinforces the take-home message that RF effects on sleep
have become a major focus of the mobile phone health controversy.
October 30... One of our alert readers has pointed out
that the sleep study we wrote about yesterday has its own Web site. It
provides details on members of the research team, their scientific advisors and
the study design. The home page includes this message: "Just the increased
worry [over RF radiation health risks] might lead to adverse health
effects." Maybe so, but given the results recorded so far, this should no
longer be a primary concern. We need to redouble our efforts towards getting a
better understanding of the health effects of RF energy.
October
29... The
ability of mobile phone radiation to affect sleep is emerging as a robust
low-level effect.
A team led by Bengt Arnetz has reported that a three-hour exposure to GSM
radiation at 1.4 W/Kg an hour before bed can disrupt sleep. This supports the
findings of Peter Achermann of the University of Zurich and Sarah Loughran of the Brain Sciences Institute at
Australia's Swinburne University.
Arnetz, who has appointments at both Wayne State University in Detroit and Sweden's Uppsala University, also found that the GSM radiation
can cause headaches, a not infrequent complaint among cell phone users. In a
paper presented at the Progress in
Electromagnetics Research Symposium (PIERS) in March in Beijing (available
online), Arnetz
concludes that the radiation affects the "components of sleep believed to
be important for recovery from daily wear and tear." Or to put it more
simply, using a cell phone can lead to stress.
If you want a good night's sleep, don't spend too long on your cell phone
before you go to bed, Arnetz advised the readers of Expressen, one of
the two major Swedish tabloids. The story was headlined "The Mobile Phone Spoils Your Sleep" (October 25).
These new results, while not yet formally published in a peer-reviewed journal,
should be taken seriously. First and foremost, this is the third independent
finding of an RF effect on sleep —though they are not exact replications, they
do complement each other. Second, Arnetz used an average SAR of 1.4W/Kg, which
is less than the current U.S. standard of 1.6W/Kg, and well below the ICNIRP
limit of 2.0W/Kg, used all over Europe. Third, the mobile phone industry (MMF) sponsored the study and IT'IS helped design the exposure setup, as it has in
most other MMF-funded studies. IT'IS' Niels Kuster has also long collaborated with
Achermann. And finally, because Arnetz has a reputation for being an EMF
skeptic. In the early 1990s when EMF emissions from computer terminals were a
major concern to office workers, Arnetz blamed the mechanization of the modern
office environment —or what he called "technostress"— for their health complaints,
discounting a possible EMF connection.
Over the last eight years, Achermann has published a series of
papers on the
effects of EMFs on sleep. Loughran's paper was published in NeuroReport
in 2005. See also a presentation by Arnetz's group from the August
PIERS meeting in Prague.