Does the Brain Detect 3G Mobile Phone Radiation Peaks? An Explorative In-Depth Analysis of an Experimental Study.
Roggeveen S, van Os J, Lousberg R · 2015
View Original AbstractWhen a dialing mobile phone was placed on the ear, the brain showed enlarged electrical reactivity to its radiation peaks, though whether this affects health remains unknown.
Plain English Summary
Researchers investigated whether third generation mobile phone radiation peaks produce event-related potentials in the brain. Thirty-one healthy females took part in a single-blind, cross-over design where a 15 minute mobile phone exposure was compared to two 15 minute sham phone conditions. When the phone was placed at the ear, an enlarged cortical reactivity was found in the frontal and central cortical regions, but not when it was placed at the heart.
Why This Matters
Each participant was measured on two separate days, with phone placement varied between the ear and heart. EEG activity and radiofrequency radiation were recorded jointly during the sessions. Epochs of 1200ms, starting 200ms before and lasting until 1000ms after the onset of a radiation peak, were extracted from the exposure condition. The main hypothesis concerned an increase of the area in the 240-500ms post-stimulus interval during ear-placement exposure, which was confirmed by multilevel regression analyses. Post-hoc analyses also found a second significantly increased area between 500-1000ms post-stimulus for almost every EEG location measured. The researchers concluded that the brain detects the radiation unconsciously, but left the question of any health consequence to future longitudinal experiments.
Exposure Details
- SAR
- 0.69 W/kg
- Power Density
- 0.56 mW/cm²
- Source/Device
- 1.9291–1.9397 GHz
Exposure Context
This study used 0.56 mW/cm² for radio frequency:
- 56Mx above the Building Biology guideline of 0.1 μW/m²
- 933.3Kx above the BioInitiative Report recommendation of 0.0006 μW/cm²
This study used 0.69 W/kg for SAR (device absorption):
- 1.7x above the Building Biology guideline of 0.4 W/kg
Building Biology guidelines are practitioner-based limits from real-world assessments. BioInitiative Report recommendations are based on peer-reviewed science. Check Your Exposure to compare your own measurements.
Where This Falls on the Concern Scale
Study Details
This study aimed to investigate whether third generation mobile phone radiation peaks result in event related potentials.
Thirty-one healthy females participated. In this single-blind, cross-over design, a 15 minute mobile...
The main a-priori hypothesis to be tested concerned an increase of the area in the 240-500ms post-st...
It was concluded that, when a dialing mobile phone is placed on the ear, its radiation, although unconsciously, is electrically detected by the brain. The question of whether or not this cortical reactivity results in a negative health outcome has to be answered in future longitudinal experiments.
Show BibTeX
@article{s_2015_does_the_brain_detect_176,
author = {Roggeveen S and van Os J and Lousberg R},
title = {Does the Brain Detect 3G Mobile Phone Radiation Peaks? An Explorative In-Depth Analysis of an Experimental Study.},
year = {2015},
url = {https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0125390},
}