Assessment of effect of cell phone radiation on human: A genotoxicity study

Abstract

The health concerns have been raised following the enormous increase in the use of wireless mobile telephones throughout the world. Human exposures to Radiofrequency (RF) Electromagnetic Force (EMF) in frequency ranges from 30 kHz - 300 GHz that falls under non-ionizing radiation can occur from use of devices viz. mobile telephones, cordless phones, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, radio, induction heaters, high powered pulsed radars and mobile phone base stations. Cell phone radiation is considered to cause indirect genomic damage when used for longer time duration. In 2011, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified mobile phone radiation as Group 2B (possibly carcinogenic). Thus this investigation had been taken, with the motive to find out whether mobile phone radiations can cause any in vivo effect on the frequency of micronucleated exfoliated buccal cells in the exposed subjects (N=20) and non-exposed individuals (N=19) and analysis of any chromosomal aberration by exposing short term peripheral lymphocyte cultures to radiation of power 20dbm in triplicate. The other part of the study was planned to measure ROS (Reactive Oxygen Species) formation in saliva of the cell phone users (N=20) and nonexposed individual (N=16), as the levels of ROS may increase due to mechanism of action of radiofrequency radiations. This study shows that there is a significant increase in genomic damage as compared to controls not using cell phone when all the three parameters are analyzed.