Phonesick: fact or fiction? Your brain on EMFs

November 7th, 2023

Written by: Stephen Wisser

This summer while visiting a good friend from college, I had an experience with Wi-Fi connectivity that I’ve never had before. My first night I connected to the Wi-Fi, but the next morning I saw to my surprise that I was no longer connected to the internet. When my friend woke up, I learned that she has her Wi-Fi on a timer, much like a lamp, so the Wi-Fi router turns off every night, then turns back on in the morning. She claimed this was to avoid unnecessary exposure to EMFs, or electromagnetic frequencies, that we experience every day from things like internet or power cables. As I would later learn, a small percentage of people like my friend that are unusually sensitive to things in the environment are called canaries, a reference to the “canary in the coalmine” metaphor where canaries’ sensitivity to toxic gasses helped warn coal miners of their presence¹. In response to an environmental factor like EMFs, canaries can experience symptoms as common as headaches and disruption of sleep to sometimes more serious symptoms like nausea. Although she wasn’t certain EMFs from the Wi-Fi were affecting her, she considers herself to be a “canary” for other things, so figured she might as well be cautious and turn off her Wi-Fi overnight. I had heard of EMFs before and the idea that EMFs may not be good for you, but until now I had never really thought seriously about it or how people might sense these invisible waves in the world. If someone decided to turn their Wi-Fi off every night to avoid EMFs, this seemed like something I should look into myself.

A Brief Introduction to Electromagnetic Frequencies

So what are EMFs? To understand the first part of the name, “electromagnetic”, it might help to think back to your high school physics class where you might have learned about radiation. Radiation is essentially waves of energy, that have both electrical and magnetic (electromagnetic) properties. Electromagnetic frequencies are a type of radiation, and while that might sound scary, there’s a little more you need to know to understand if EMFs are a problem. Not all radiation is created equally. Importantly, radiation comes in different levels of power, from low-power radiation found in microwaves, to higher-power radiation found in x-rays you get from a dentist or doctor. Higher power radiation is generally considered to be bad as it can disturb the molecules in our bodies and lead to diseases like cancer.² Lower energy radiation, which is more common, is generally considered to be safe and is emitted from everyday objects like radar, power lines, radio communication, household appliances, and cell phones. Although EMFs technically refer to all radiation, most people and scientific experiments refer to just the low energy radiation as EMFs. For the rest of this post when I say EMFs, I’m referring to this type of low energy radiation that is generally considered safe.

A Complicated Story

Since the EMFs we experience daily from things like Wi-Fi, cell phones, and radar are almost all lower energy radiation, they aren’t powerful enough to affect the cells in our bodies. So from a physics perspective, there is no reason to think EMFs affect our health. Good news! But what does the neuroscience perspective say? This is a much trickier question since there is a lot of research here from all sides, some claiming EMFs have no effect, others claiming they cause harm, and others claiming they can help us. The studies conducted on EMFs are in fact so divided that one group of scientists analyzed several experiments and came to the conclusion that many studies were not based on science at all, but instead on what organization funded the research³, a phenomenon known as sponsorship bias. It is obvious that there is more work to be done to get a better picture, but for now let’s look at some of the experiments from all angles to understand the current, but limited knowledge.

 A Survey Study

One study that investigates the potential harm from EMFs comes from 2003, in which scientists studied people living near a cell phone base, a large emitter of EMFs. The researchers found that people living less than 300 meters away from the cell phone base reported symptoms that those living further away did not⁴. Interestingly, the increase in symptoms reported was dependent on the distance from the cell phone base: only the people living 10 meters or less from the base reported severe symptoms, like nausea and loss of appetite, while people living further away (200m) only experienced headaches and sleep disruption⁴.

While it might seem from this experiment that EMFs caused the reported symptoms, there are a few problems with the study itself. First off, this was a survey experiment, meaning the scientists relied on what people said with no way to verify if it was true. More importantly, even if the reported symptoms were all true symptoms, it is impossible for the scientists to know if the symptoms people experienced were caused by the EMFs themselves or other factors. It is possible that the reported differences could be due to other things related to the cell phone base, like a lot of traffic from trucks coming to and from the cell towers, or from lights that are on all the time at the building and cell towers. Finally, it is important to keep in mind that these people were living near a cell phone base, a major emitter of EMFs that most people don’t live near and won’t experience. While this survey gives reason to investigate further, we should be careful when making conclusions regarding the rest of the population or about causes.

Animal Studies

While survey experiments are important because they allow scientists to see what’s happening in the real world, other experiments where scientists carefully control the setting and measurements using animal models can give a more complete picture. In one study conducted in rats, researchers found that exposing the rats to EMFs similar to ones emitted by cell phones disrupted their memories, damaged structures within neurons, and also damaged the blood brain barrier⁵, an important structure that protects the brain from harmful things in the blood. Another group found that exposure to EMFs caused neuronal damage in a few brain regions, one of which was the hippocampus, a region known to be involved in memory⁶. What was interesting about this study was that they specifically used teenage rats to model human teens using cell phones.

From these two studies, it might seem that EMFs could damage neurons in humans as well, but we should recognize an important problem with these studies. The amount of EMF exposure these animals received was quite high, more so than the average person is likely to experience. For instance, in one of these experiments, rats were exposed to a steady stream of EMFs for 3 hours a day for 14 or 28 days straight⁵. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t normally stand near a microwave or right next to my Wi-Fi router for 3 hours every day. So while these scientists found an interesting result in the animal models, we should be skeptical to draw conclusions from them as it relates to human health.

Contradictory Evidence

In addition to some problems mentioned with the experiments discussed so far, there is almost an equal amount of research on the other side saying that EMFs don’t cause any problems at all or may even be beneficial. One study found that exposure to EMFs from a cell phone did not induce any changes in a brain region in humans responsible for movement⁷. Another study found that EMFs from cell phones did cause changes in brain activity, but that these changes were only temporary and disappeared after the phone was turned off⁸. And yet another group of scientists went a step further to show that EMFs were able to reduce a protein called amyloid beta, a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease, and suggested that EMFs could one day be a therapy for treating people with Alzheimer’s⁹.

Final Thoughts

So, with experiments on both sides claiming EMFs either cause harm or do not, who are we to believe? With hotly debated topics like these, the true answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. For one, it is likely that EMFs are doing something to our brains, but whether that effect is good, bad, or neutral is a different story. Even the scientists that concluded EMFs had no effect on health were able to detect a change in brain activity from the EMFs, so a common theme among most experiments is that EMFs are changing brain activity. But with experiments coming to different conclusions, it is probably too early to say what the overall effects of EMFs are.

Throughout the world, about 3-5% of individual countries’ populations are estimated to suffer from alleged EMF-induced conditions.¹⁰ With millions of people potentially affected, there is a clear need for more research in this area, especially since EMFs aren’t going away anytime soon. It might be that for some unknown reason EMFs only cause mild problems in the select few canaries, like my friend. Until we conduct more experiments without the many biases that have influenced the current research, the jury on EMFs is still out.

References

1. Lacherza-Drew, N. (2021). Highly sensitive persons & canaries. Vici Psychological Care, LLC. https://www.vicipsychcare.com/blog/highly-sensitive-persons-canaries

2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021). Radiation studies: Ionizing radiation. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/ionizing_radiation.html

3. Valentini, E., Ferrara, M., Presaghi, F., De Gennaro, L., & Curcio, G. (2011). Republished review: Systematic review and meta-analysis of psychomotor effects of mobile phone electromagnetic fields. Postgraduate medical journal, 87(1031), 643-651.

4. Santini, R., Santini, P., Le Ruz, P., Danze, J. M., & Seigne, M. (2003). Survey study of people living in the vicinity of cellular phone base stations. Electromagnetic biology and medicine, 22(1), 41-49.

5. Tang, J., Zhang, Y., Yang, L., Chen, Q., Tan, L., Zuo, S., … & Zhu, G. (2015). Exposure to 900 MHz electromagnetic fields activates the mkp-1/ERK pathway and causes blood-brain barrier damage and cognitive impairment in rats. Brain research, 1601, 92-101.

6. Salford, L. G., Brun, A. E., Eberhardt, J. L., Malmgren, L., & Persson, B. R. (2003). Nerve cell damage in mammalian brain after exposure to microwaves from GSM mobile phones. Environmental health perspectives, 111(7), 881-883.

7. Inomata‐Terada, S., Okabe, S., Arai, N., Hanajima, R., Terao, Y., Frubayashi, T., & Ugawa, Y. (2007). Effects of high frequency electromagnetic field (EMF) emitted by mobile phones on the human motor cortex. Bioelectromagnetics: Journal of the Bioelectromagnetics Society, The Society for Physical Regulation in Biology and Medicine, The European Bioelectromagnetics Association, 28(7), 553-561.

8. Kramarenko, A. V., & Tan, U. (2003). Effects of high-frequency electromagnetic fields on human EEG: a brain mapping study. International Journal of Neuroscience, 113(7), 1007-1019.

9. Tsoy, A., Saliev, T., Abzhanova, E., Turgambayeva, A., Kaiyrlykyzy, A., Akishev, M., … & Askarova, S. (2019). The effects of mobile phone radiofrequency electromagnetic fields on β-amyloid-induced oxidative stress in human and rat primary astrocytes. Neuroscience, 408, 46-57.

10. Belpomme, D., & Irigaray, P. (2020). Electrohypersensitivity as a newly identified and characterized neurologic pathological disorder: how to diagnose, treat, and prevent it. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 21(6), 1915.

Cover image by Niek Verlaan from Pixabay