Association between exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields assessed by dosimetry and acute symptoms in children and adolescents: a population based cross-sectional study

Environmental Health

Research

Christian Heumann¹  Rüdiger von Kries²  Silke Thomas³  Sabine Heinrich³  Katja Radon³ 

[1] Department of Statistics, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Ludwigstr. 33, 80539, Munich, Germany;Institute for Social Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Ludwig-Maximilians- University, Heiglhofstr. 63, 80377, Munich, Germany;Unit for Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology & Net Teaching, Institute and Outpatient Clinic for Occupational-, Social- and Environmental Medicine, University Hospital of Munich (LMU), Ziemssenstr. 1, 80336, Munich, Germany;

关键词: Mobile Phone;    Acute Symptom;    Measured Exposure;    Differential Misclassification;    Mobile Phone Base Station;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1476-069X-9-75

 received in 2010-06-09, accepted in 2010-11-25,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe increase in numbers of mobile phone users was accompanied by some concern that exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF EMF) might adversely affect acute health especially in children and adolescents. The authors investigated this potential association using personal dosimeters.MethodsA 24-hour exposure profile of 1484 children and 1508 adolescents was generated in a population-based cross-sectional study in Germany between 2006 and 2008 (participation 52%). Personal interview data on socio-demographic characteristics, self-reported exposure and potential confounders were collected. Acute symptoms were assessed twice during the study day using a symptom diary.ResultsOnly few of the large number of investigated associations were found to be statistically significant. At noon, adolescents with a measured exposure in the highest quartile during morning hours reported a statistically significant higher intensity of headache (Odd Ratio: 1.50; 95% confidence interval: 1.03, 2.19). At bedtime, adolescents with a measured exposure in the highest quartile during afternoon hours reported a statistically significant higher intensity of irritation in the evening (4th quartile 1.79; 1.23, 2.61), while children reported a statistically significant higher intensity of concentration problems (4th quartile 1.55; 1.02, 2.33).ConclusionsWe observed few statistically significant results which are not consistent over the two time points. Furthermore, when the 10% of the participants with the highest exposure are taken into consideration the significant results of the main analysis could not be confirmed. Based on the pattern of these results, we assume that the few observed significant associations are not causal but rather occurred by chance.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Heinrich et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.