Comparing chromosome damage induced by mobile telephony radiation and a high caffeine dose: Effect of combination and exposure duration

Abstract

I recently reported induction of chromatid-type aberrations in human peripheral blood lymphocytes after a single 15 min exposure to Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) Mobile Telephony (MT) Electromagnetic Field (EMF) from a mobile phone. Lymphocytes from six healthy subjects were stimulated for mitosis, and exposed during the G2/M phase at 1 cm distance from the handset during an active phone call in “talk” mode. The same type of cells from the same subjects treated with a high caffeine dose (~ 290 times above the permissible single dose for an adult human) exhibited the same type of aberrations in a little smaller but comparable degree. The combination of this caffeine dose and the 15 min MT EMF exposure increased dramatically the number of aberrations in all subjects. The combined effect increased almost linearly with increasing duration of exposure to the MT EMF. Thus, MT EMF exposure ~ 136 times below the official limit (ICNIRP 2020) exerts a genotoxic action even greater than that of a caffeine dose ~ 290 times above the corresponding limit. Therefore, with a reasonable approximation, the limit for MT EMFs should be lowered by at least ~ 4×104 times (136×290) for short-term exposures, and ~ 4×106 times for long-term exposures.