Experimental study of potential adverse effects on the auditory system of rabbits exposed to short-term GSM-1800 radiation.

PURPOSE: The effects of the electromagnetic (EM) radiation emitted by a mobile phone on the central auditory system of rabbits are investigated in this paper. Auditory brainstem response (ABR) measurements were performed before and after short-term exposure to EM radiation. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Excitation was provided by a GSM-1800 emitter placed in contact with the (randomly selected) ear of the anesthetized rabbit/subject. The latency of waves I, II, III, IV, V and the interpeak latencies I-III, I-V, III-V were recorded, for both ears, before (baseline recordings) and after 1, 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes of exposure to the EM radiation. The repeated measures one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by the post hoc Tukey test for pairwise comparisons was performed in order to decide about the significance of the results. RESULTS: The statistical tests indicated that, as regards the ear ipsilateral to the radiating module, the mean latencies of waves I, II, III, IV, V, I-III, I-IV after 60 min exposure, the mean latencies of waves I, III, IV, V, I-III, I-IV after 45 min exposure and the mean latencies of waves I, III, IV, V, I-IV after 30 min exposure, were significantly prolonged compared to the corresponding baseline values. Statistically significant differences were also found for certain peak and interpeak latencies for 60 min exposure as compared with the corresponding results for 1 min and 15 min exposure. No statistically significant delay was observed for the latencies before and after the exposure, for the ear contralateral to the radiation source. CONCLUSIONS: Although we found that more than 30 min exposure to GSM-1800 radiation resulted in prolongation of certain ABR components of rabbits, further investigation may be needed into the potential adverse effects on the auditory pathways.

Radio-wave exposure of the human head: analytical study based on a versatile eccentric spheres model including a brain core and a pair of eyeballs.

A versatile eccentric-spheres model of the human head is used in this paper to investigate radio-wave absorption. Numerical results, obtained by use of an exact analytical solution, are presented for the total, percentage, and gram-specific absorption. Interest is mainly in the brain and in the eyes of an adult or an infant head. Our model comprises a host sphere and several spherical inclusions, all concentrically stratified with respect to their own center. Any number of inclusions and any number of concentric layers for the host sphere and each one of the inclusions can be considered. Excitation is provided either by a plane-wave or by a nearby electric dipole. The analytical solution is obtained by use of the indirect-mode matching method. The theory of this paper and the accompanying computer code constitute a versatile tool for analytical studies of cellular-phone interactions with the human head. Specific absorption rate maps in a horizontal cross section of the head model manifest the existence of hot spots in the eyes and near the center of the brain.