The interplay of mobile phone radiation and psychological effects on psychological and somatic health, behavior and cognition

Abstract

Wireless media devices, in particular mobile phones, have become ubiquitous companions in our daily life and in particular the younger generation is early adopting new technologies. Simultaneously, public health concerns regarding wireless media use were raised from experts of two different scientific domains. The first concern targets the potential impact of exposure to radiofrequency-electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) on the health. Hereby, in particular children and adolescents might be prone to any effect of RF-EMF due to their longer life-time exposure and their still developing rain and body. A part from this, psychologists fear a negative impact on emotion, general well-being and cognition through simply using wireless devices and related behavioural changes. Since both of these concerns are related to the same exposure, wireless media use, and often target the same outcomes, they are highly correlated and a typical situation for confounding in epidemiological research. The current thesis focuses on disentangling a potential RF-EMF effect due to wireless media use from the potential behavioural effects. In previous studies in both fields, exposure was mainly measured via quantitative media use, e.g. daily call frequency or duration, which makes it impossible to attribute any result distinctly to RF-EMF or the usage. To overcome this problem, innovative and exclusive exposure approximations were developed for both, the usage behaviour and RF-EMF and finally validated in a longitudinal analysis on adolescents’ memory performance. The thesis presents data from the Swiss HERMES (Health Effects Related to Mobile phonE use in adolescentS) cohort that investigated approximately 950 adolescents in Central Switzerland.