| Does Short-Term Exposure to Mobile Phone Base Station Signals Increase Symptoms in Individuals Who Report Sensitivity to Electromagnetic Fields? A Double-Blind Randomized Provocation Study Stacy Eltiti, Denise Wallace, Anna Ridgewell, Konstantina Zougkou, Riccardo Russo, Francisco Sepulveda, Dariush Mirshekar-Syahkal, Paul Rasor, Roger Deeble, and Elaine Fox University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom Abstract
Background: Individuals with idiopathic environmental illness with attribution to electromagnetic fields (IEI-EMF) believe they suffer negative health effects when exposed to electromagnetic fields from everyday objects such as mobile phone base stations. Objectives: This study used both open provocation and double-blind tests to determine if sensitive and control individuals experience more negative health effects when exposed to base station-like signals compared with sham. Methods: Fifty-six self-reported sensitive and 120 control participants were tested in an open provocation test. Of these, 12 sensitive and 6 controls withdrew after the first session. The remainder completed a series of double-blind tests. Subjective measures of well-being and symptoms as well as physiological measures of blood volume pulse, heart rate, and skin conductance were obtained. Results: During the open provocation, sensitive individuals reported lower levels of well-being in both the global system for mobile communication (GSM) and universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) compared with sham exposure, whereas controls reported more symptoms during the UMTS exposure. During double-blind tests the GSM signal did not have any effect on either group. Sensitive participants did report elevated levels of arousal during the UMTS condition, whereas the number or severity of symptoms experienced did not increase. Physiological measures did not differ across the three exposure conditions for either group. Conclusions: Short-term exposure to a typical GSM base station-like signal did not affect well-being or physiological functions in sensitive or control individuals. Sensitive individuals reported elevated levels of arousal when exposed to a UMTS signal. Further analysis, however, indicated that this difference was likely to be due to the effect of order of exposure rather than the exposure itself. Key words: base station, electromagnetic fields, electromagnetic hypersensitivity, mobile phone, well-being. Environ Health Perspect 115:1603–1608 (2007) . doi:10.1289/ehp.10286 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 25 July 2007]
Address correspondence to S. Eltiti, Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom. Telephone: 44 (0) 1206873784. Fax: 44 (0) 1206873801. E-mail: seltiti@essex.ac.uk We thank all our participants, especially IEI-EMF individuals, for their contribution to our study ; also Red-M for supplying the exposure system, and the National Physical Laboratory for the screened rooms and independent measurements. This project was funded by the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme grant RUM 20. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the funders. The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 21 March 2007 ; accepted 24 June 2007.
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