Subjective symptoms and hypersensitivity to cellular telephones

Abstract

Electromagnetic hypersensitivity has been reported to be caused by exposure to electromagnetic fields emitted from cellular telephones and cell-phone base stations. The prevalence varies considerably with geographic location. A particularly vexing challenge in studying this phenomenon is that the symptoms reported by electromagnetically hypersensitive individuals, such as headache and fatigue, are common and nonspecific: they may have many causes. A provocation experiment showed that the number of reported symptoms was higher during sham exposure than during RF exposure conditions, and that none of the test subjects could distinguish RF exposure from sham exposure. The research published to date on electromagnetic hypersensitivity and subjective symptoms from exposure to cell-phone RF fields is very limited. Exposure of the affected persons was generally below the recommended guidelines promulgated in internationally accepted standards. The evidence now available suggests that while the reported hypersensitivity and subjective symptoms may be real, the question of whether they are associated with cell-phone use must await more comprehensive studies.