Men - Cell phone use and fertility

www.foxnews.com...

Men who use cell phones have a lower sperm count and a higher rate of defective sperm then men who don't use cell phones. The more you use a cell phone, the more at risk your sperm are.

I'm not a guy .. but I figured the guys here would be interested in that. Especially if they are of baby-making age.

I have to wonder what our technology is doing to us. Sitting in front of computers all day; other technologies; wonder if those have any effect as well.

Well, I'm male, own a cell phone (mobile phone actually, I'm from the UK) and along with brain damage (which I probably ave any way), a low sperm count doesn't suprise me.

I'm just waiting for the news that tells us that microwave ovens are dangerous and since they've been around they've been slowly killing us.

I for one don't over use my mobile phone, I bloody hate the things but find them usefull. I also don't use microwave ovens.

Remirah.

I use my cellphone a lot for going online, using the GPRS function.. And I tend to try and hold my phone as far away as possible from my groin, as long as it fetches data.. Paranoia? Maybe..

Well, that didn't stop my brother in law from impregnating my sister with twins. He finally had to get snipped.

This is a huge issue.

If you think about the amount of RF energy being given off by -

phones, videos, tv's, alarm systems, computers, cars, microwaves, cell towers, public services, planes.

you have, phones / laptops giving off GSM, Bluetooth, WI-FI etc.

its all around us, and its no surprise that the number of cancer cases is increasing also.

Classic example is digital tv in the UK. This is being used mainly to reduce the crowded airspace in the uk, and is currently running on low power, and will be increased when the old systems are turned off.

The huge issue is really with new systems like tetra in the UK

actually, when i think about this a little, is there a chance that this is by design.

It could be that widespread use of mobile phones could be an attempt to reduce the population a little, with cancer and low sperm rates.

Much in the same way that smoking used to be good for you, and socially acceptable, but is now seen to cause cancer and surprise surprise low sperm rates.

Mobile phones are also highly addictive and socially spread.

Nokia the new Marlboro?

[edit on 24-10-2006 by ewan]

Microwaves are definitely a problem, but there seems to be a way to reduce the effects (even though you won't like it if you're a cellphone addict).

first of all, two older posts on the subject:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Now the short version:

Damage by microwave does not increase linearly with time, ie. an exposure of one minute will damage or kill, say, 1% of your test organisms (f-ex. bacteriophages ) while ten minutes will kill them all, not just 10%.

Therefore, keep call durations short, as short as possible, cellphones are using pulsed transimissions, which might delay the effect a bit, but i have no idea how much because i don't know how long a cell needs to 'relax'.

The findings, however, do not prove a link between cell phone use and semen quality, researcher Ashok Agarwal, PhD, said.

“This is still very preliminary and I would not want these findings misinterpreted as showing that cell phone use is a definite cause of decreased [male] fertility,” he said. “There are still many unanswered questions.”

Cell phones are not the only modern conveniences suspected of influencing sperm counts. At least one study has suggested that wearing disposable diapers as a baby can influence adult fertility, and another proposed a link between laptop use and sperm quality.

None of these suspected environmental influences, however, has been proven to influence male fertility, said Rebecca Sokol, MD, PhD, president of the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology.

Her own research suggests a link between air pollution and declining sperm quality.

“I tell them what we know, which isn’t a lot,” she said. “We know that high (scrotal) temperature is bad for sperm, and we think that smoking, drinking, and marijuana use are probably bad. But we still have a lot to learn.”

www.foxnews.com...

I wouldn't get too excited about these finding quite yet. Correlation is not causation, as the old saw goes.