Comparison of bioactivity between GSM 900 MHz and DCS 1800 MHz mobile telephony radiation.
Panagopoulos DJ, Chavdoula ED, Karabarbounis A, Margaritis LH · 2007
View Original AbstractLower frequency cell phone radiation proved more harmful to reproduction than higher frequencies, suggesting power intensity matters more than frequency.
Plain English Summary
Researchers exposed fruit flies to two different types of cell phone radiation - GSM 900 MHz (used in older phones) and DCS 1800 MHz (used in newer phones) - to compare their biological effects. Both types of radiation significantly reduced the flies' ability to reproduce, but the lower frequency GSM 900 MHz radiation proved more harmful than the higher frequency DCS 1800 MHz radiation. The study suggests that radiation intensity matters more than the specific frequency when it comes to biological damage.
Why This Matters
This study provides important evidence that different types of cell phone radiation have varying biological impacts, with the seemingly counterintuitive finding that lower frequency radiation can be more harmful. The research demonstrates that GSM 900 MHz radiation - still widely used in many parts of the world - caused greater reproductive harm to fruit flies than the higher frequency DCS 1800 MHz radiation. What makes this particularly significant is the researchers' conclusion that field intensity, not carrier frequency, appears to be the primary driver of biological effects. This challenges the common assumption that higher frequencies are automatically more dangerous and reinforces that we need to consider the power levels of our wireless devices, not just their operating frequencies. The reproductive effects observed in this study add to the growing body of evidence suggesting that wireless radiation can interfere with fundamental biological processes at non-thermal levels.
Exposure Information
Specific exposure levels were not quantified in this study. The study examined exposure from: GSM 900-MHz and DCS 1800-MHz
Study Details
An increasing number of studies find that pulsed Radio Frequency (RF), electromagnetic radiation of both systems of digital mobile telephony, established and commonly used in Europe during the last years, GSM 900 MHz (Global System for Mobile telecommunications) and DCS 1800 MHz (Digital Cellular System), exert intense biological action on different organisms and cells (Hardell et al., 2006; Hyland, 2000; Kundi, 2004; Panagopoulos et al., 2004, 2007). The two types of cellular telephony radiation use different carrier frequencies and give different frequency spectra, but they usually also differ in intensity, as GSM 900 MHz antennas operate at about double the power output than the corresponding DCS 1800 MHz ones. In our present experiments, we used a model biological system, the reproductive capacity of Drosophila melanogaster, to compare the biological activity between the two systems of cellular mobile telephony radiation.
Both types of radiation were found to decrease significantly and non thermally the insect's reprodu...
Show BibTeX
@article{dj_2007_comparison_of_bioactivity_between_2507,
author = {Panagopoulos DJ and Chavdoula ED and Karabarbounis A and Margaritis LH},
title = {Comparison of bioactivity between GSM 900 MHz and DCS 1800 MHz mobile telephony radiation.},
year = {2007},
url = {https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17454081/},
}