Miscarriage rates tripled in women exposed to higher magnetic field (MF) non-ionizing radiation

Higher exposure to magnetic fields (MFs) non-ionizing radiations nearly triples the risk of miscarriage in pregnant women compared to those who get lower exposure reports the results of prospective cohort study published online in Nature’s Scientific Reports.

The electromagnetic spectrum 

This study reaffirms the findings from earlier studies that non-ionizing radiations are not totally harmless, and they have biological effects on human health.  

The lead author Dr. De-Kun Li, a senior research scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, California call it a serious public health challenge as humans are ubiquitously exposed to both low frequency MFs generated by home appliances, transformers, powerlines etc and higher frequency MFs from cell phones, wireless networks, smart meter networks, cell towers and wireless devices.

The authors identified 900 women with a positive pregnancy test through the electronic medical record (EMR) laboratory database from bay area counties in Northern California. The MFs exposure was measured in milligauss (mG) through EMDEX Lite meter (Enertech Consultants Inc.) that the women carried throughout 24 hours during pregnancy.

The exposure was further classified as typical or atypical based on the women following her daily schedule or doing something apart from her routine because it was seen that there was a significant difference between exposure on a typical day vs atypical day.  

As the women were followed progressively into pregnancy till 20 weeks since the positive urine pregnancy test, the study was able to detect early miscarriages that earlier studies might have missed.

Women’s personal risk factors and obstetric history was ascertained along with presence or absence of other confounders to rule out bias. They were followed into pregnancy till miscarriages, end of pregnancy due to other reasons like ectopic or till they reach 20 weeks.

Cox Proportional Hazards regression model was used to examine the association between MFs exposures and miscarriage rates.

After adjusting for the known confounders like maternal age, race, education, smoking during pregnancy, and prior miscarriage, overall, pregnant women who had higher MF exposure during pregnancy (higher 3 quartiles) had a 48% greater risk of miscarriage than women who had lower MF exposure (in the lowest quartile): adjusted HR = 1.48, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.03–2.14 

The association was stronger and significant when the data was examined for typical days vs atypical days, on which no association was observed.

Similarly, no difference was observed between women with (≥2) miscarriages vs women with no prior bad obstetric history. Although, the association was stronger in women who were exposed to the higher quartiles as opposed to women exposed to lowest quartile, no significant dose response relationship was observed.

The association was also consistent across different sources of MFs exposure.

This is the only study that used an objective measuring device (EMDEX Lite meter) to measure the radiations and were able to measure the effects prospectively in months instead of years as in cancer and other chronic diseases.

Prior studies have found an association between long term exposure to non-ionizing radiations and increased risk of brain cancer and low sperm counts.

The lead author Dr. Li stresses the importance of further studies in this subject area. Meanwhile she advices children and young adults, especially pregnant women to stay away from cell phones and other equipments that emit non-ionizing radiations.

Couples who are trying to conceive should also minimize their exposure by maintaining a safe distance from cell phone and other house hold appliances.

Abstract

Full text

Media courtesy: Daily Mirror, Vimeo.com, wireless hygiene 

Pregnant women should limit the use of cell phone: cautions results of largest study till date.

courtesy: research medical center 

Children born to mothers who frequently used cell phones prenatally were more likely to have hyperactivity/inattention problems as compared to those who used it less frequently.

The study was published online in Journal Environment International.

The lead author Laura Birks is not advising the mothers to stop using cell phones, but just be cautions and use it in moderation because the research has still not proved causation.

An earlier study published in Journal Epidemiology in 2008 also found that mothers who did use the handsets were 54 per cent more likely to have children with behavioral problems and that the likelihood increased with the amount of potential exposure to the radiation.

In the current study the researchers analyzed 83,884 mother-child pairs in five cohorts from Denmark, Korea, Netherlands, Norway and Spain during various time periods from 1996 to 2011.

The cell phone use was divided into none, low, medium, and high based on the usage reported by mother. 

The children were assessed for behavioral, hyperactivity/inattention or emotional problems between ages 5-7 years.

The earliest cohort from Denmark between 1996–2002 was the only cohort having enough women who did not use cell phones while pregnant.

Children born to mothers who were on cell phones for at least 4 calls/day or in another cohort for an hour/day were 28% more likely to be hyperactive as compared to children whose mothers made 1 or fewer call per day.

The association was found consistently across all cohorts, both for prospective and retrospective collected data.

Researchers are raising more questions after the results of study was published.

Dr. Robin Hansen, a pediatrician and professor at the University of California, Davis in Sacramento opines that the study does not answer the question whether it is the actual handset or your parenting behavior that causes the psychological problems.

She said in an interview with Medscape “Now we have to dig deeper and figure out why? Is it the electronic signals that go through your brain and your body, or how it changes your interactions with your child postnatally?”

She also said that we also need to look at the fact that those mothers who are busy on cellphones do not have enough time for their children, shaping their behavior differently. Children become hyperactive and through tantrum to get the parents away from the cell phone and before long it becomes a habit.

The Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection advises to limit the use of phone in children too. It concludes that children who talk on the handsets are likely to suffer from "disruption of memory, decline of attention, diminishing learning and cognitive abilities, increased irritability" in the short term, and that longer-term hazards include "depressive syndrome" and "degeneration of the nervous structures of the brain".

On July 1,2015 more than one hundred medical doctors, scientists and public health experts from around the world have signed a Joint Statement advising pregnant women to take simple precautions to protect themselves and their babies from wireless radiation. The Statement is part of a national right-to-know campaign called the BabySafe Project created by two non-profit organizations to inform pregnant women about the issue.

"The wireless world may be convenient, but it's not without risks," says Patricia Wood, Executive Director of Grassroots Environmental Education and co-creator of the BabySafe Project. "When more than one hundred of the world's leading medical doctors and researchers on wireless radiation say we have enough evidence for women to take protective action, we think women should know about it."