You don't want your child to have a mobile phone? New research by epidemiologists offers you yet another compelling reason to keep your child waiting for their first mobile device as long as possible. As scientists have found out, radiation from phones can damage the memory of a teenager.
A research group at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute has argued that radio frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) can negatively affect the adolescent brain. In particular, one of these harmful effects is memory impairment.
Researchers studied about 700 students in public schools in Switzerland, aged 12 to 17. Observing adolescents for a year and conducting special tests, scientists assessed how exposure to radio frequency pulses from a mobile phone affected memory. And, as it turned out, the memory work in children has noticeably deteriorated, and the nerve functions in the right hemisphere of the brain have suffered the most. This is quite natural and understandable, since almost all the children were right-handed and therefore during a conversation they held the phone to the right of their heads.
Martin Rösli, head of environmental and health at Swiss company TPH, says: "This may indicate that it is indeed the RF impulses absorbed by the brain that are responsible for the observed results."
However, Rösli could not confidently rule out that other factors, for example, puberty, played a role in memory impairment. From here, scientists are planning further, deeper and more massive research to eliminate such possible factors and determine all the long-term risks associated with radiation exposure from phones.
So far, the study authors note that using a portable smartphone to browse the web, send text messages or play games results in minimal health effects. On this basis, scientists are already giving parents recommendations: to force children or use headphones during a conversation, or turn on the speakers in the phone and use a speakerphone for communication.
This study is not the first, but a kind of continuation of the project, the report of which was published back in 2015. Even then, scientists confirmed the fact that the brain of adolescents absorbed certain frequency impulses and the effect of this on a number of brain functions, in particular, on memory.
At the time, the study's findings were controversial and sparked a long debate, so the new study doubled the sample of children tested. In addition, more in-depth clinical tests were carried out, which fully confirmed the results of 2015.
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Nevertheless, mobile operators call this result controversial, forcing scientists to work again on their epidemiological project, in particular, the precise calculation of the critical cumulative dose of radioactive radiation that causes disruption to the brain.