Work

Multiple assessment methods of prenatal exposure to radio frequency radiation from telecommunication in the Mothers and Children’s Environmental Health (MOCEH) study

Year: 2016

Type: article

Abstract: Thus far, it is unclear whether exposure to RFR during pregnancy affects health of fetuses and children.Previous studies concerning health effects of RFR exposure on children have examined its effects with regard to cancer [5][6][7][8], headache [9], low birth weight [10] and neurodevelopment [11][12][13][14].Results of those studies were controversial: some studies have reported no association [6,7,[10][11][12]15], whereas others have reported adverse effects [5,8,9,13,14].This dichotomy may result from different study designs used, lack of prospective RFR exposure measurements [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][13][14][15] and the use of questionnaires for exposure assessment [9][10][11][12][13][14][15].As information obtained by the use of questionnaires can be limited by recall bias it is less reliable and valid than information obtained using quantitative measurements [16].Measurement data obtained from mobile communication base stations hardly reflect index's activity for 24 h, because they estimate the values both from a long distance and only for the surrounding residences.On the other hand, they reflect continuous whole-body exposure values relatively well [16].Therefore, measurement data obtained using a personal exposure meter (PEM) may be more useful for measuring Abstract Objectives: To evaluate prenatal exposure to radiofrequency radiation (RFR) from telecommunication using a mobile phone questionnaire, operator data logs of mobile phone use and a personal exposure meter (PEM).Material and Methods: The study included 1228 mother-infants pairs from the Mothers and Children's Environmental Health (MOCEH) study -a multicenter prospective cohort study ongoing since 2006, in which participants were enrolled at ≤ 20 weeks of pregnancy, with a follow-up of a child birth and growth to assess the association between prenatal environmental exposure and children's health.The questionnaire included the average calling frequency per day and the average calling time per day.An EME Spy 100 PEM was used to measure RFR among 269 pregnant women from November 2007 to August 2010.The operators' log data were obtained from 21 participants.The Spearman's correlation test was performed to evaluate correlation coefficient and 95% confidence intervals between the mobile phone use information from the questionnaire, operators' log data, and data recorded by the PEM.Results: The operators' log data and information from the self-reported questionnaire showed significantly high correlations in the average calling frequency per day (ρ = 0.6, p = 0.004) and average calling time per day (ρ = 0.5, p = 0.02).The correlation between information on the mobile phone use in the self-reported questionnaire and exposure index recorded by the PEM was poor.But correlation between the information of the operators' log data and exposure index for transmission of mobile communication was significantly high: correlation coefficient (p-value) was 0.44 (0.07) for calling frequency per day, and it was 0.49 (0.04) for calling time per day.Conclusions: The questionnaire information on the mobile phone use showed moderate to high quality.Using multiple methods for exposure assessment might be better than using only one method.

Source: International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health

DOI: 10.13075/ijomeh.1896.00803