What is harmful for male fertility: Cell phone or the wireless internet?

Abstract

In this study, we aimed to assess the potential harmful effects of radiofrequency-electromagnetic radiation on sperm parameters. We requested semen for analyses from the male patients coming to our infertility division and also asked them to fill out an anonymous questionnaire. We queried their mobile phone and wireless internet usage frequencies in order to determine their radiofrequency-electromagnetic radiation exposure. A total of 1082 patients filled the questionnaire but 51 of them were excluded from the study because of azoospermia. There was no significant difference between sperm counts and sperm morphology excluding sperm motility, due to mobile phone usage period, (p = 0.074, p = 0.909, and p = 0.05, respectively). The total motile sperm count and the progressive motile sperm count decreased due to the increase of internet usage (p = 0.032 and p = 0.033, respectively). In line with the total motile sperm count, progressive motile sperm count also decreased with wireless internet usage compared with the wired internet connection usage (p = 0.009 and p = 0.018, respectively). There was a negative correlation between wireless internet usage duration and the total sperm count (r = −0.089, p = 0.039). We have also explored the negative effect of wireless internet use on sperm motility according to our preliminary results.

Keywords

• Cellular phone
• Radiofrequency-electromagnetic radiation
• Sperm
• Wi-Fi