The response of human bacteria to static magnetic field and radiofrequency electromagnetic field.
Crabtree DPE, Herrera BJ, Kang S. · 2017
View Original AbstractCell phone radiation disrupts beneficial skin bacteria, potentially affecting health through the crucial human-microbiome relationship.
Plain English Summary
Researchers at Baylor University exposed bacteria from human skin to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (the type emitted by cell phones) and found that these exposures altered bacterial growth patterns. The study tested both laboratory bacteria and skin bacteria samples from people with different cell phone usage histories, finding variable but consistent disruption across different bacterial species. This suggests that cell phone radiation may be disrupting the beneficial bacteria that naturally live on our skin, potentially affecting human health through this disrupted relationship.
Why This Matters
This research opens an important new avenue in EMF health research by examining how radiofrequency radiation affects the human microbiome. Your skin hosts trillions of beneficial bacteria that play crucial roles in immune function, wound healing, and protection against pathogens. The science demonstrates that cell phone-level RF exposures can disrupt these bacterial communities, which could have cascading effects on your health that we're only beginning to understand. What makes this study particularly compelling is that the researchers found disruption in skin bacteria samples from actual cell phone users, not just laboratory cultures. This suggests real-world relevance to the billions of people carrying these devices daily. While this is early-stage research that needs replication, it highlights yet another pathway through which EMF exposure may affect human health - one that the wireless industry has never studied in their safety assessments.
Exposure Information
Specific exposure levels were not quantified in this study.
Study Details
The aim of this study is to investigate The response of human bacteria to static magnetic field and radiofrequency electromagnetic field.
we investigated the response of both laboratory culture strains and isolates of skin bacteria under ...
The growth patterns of laboratory cultures of Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Staphylo...
These findings led us to hypothesize that cell phone level RF-EMF disrupts human skin microbiota. Thus, the results from the current study lay ground for more comprehensive research on the effect of RF-EMF on human health through the human-microbiota relationship.
Show BibTeX
@article{dpe_2017_the_response_of_human_1998,
author = {Crabtree DPE and Herrera BJ and Kang S.},
title = {The response of human bacteria to static magnetic field and radiofrequency electromagnetic field.},
year = {2017},
url = {https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28956351/},
}