Study Links Cell Phone Use to Male Infertility

Posted on October 25, 2006

The Daily Mail reports that a recent study of cell phone users could mean that men who use cell phones are at an increased risk of infertility. The study found that men who use cell phones for over four hours a day had a 25% lower sperm count.

US researchers in Cleveland and New Orleans, and doctors in Mumbai, India, looked at more than 360 men undergoing checks at a fertility clinic who were classified into three groups according to their sperm count.
Men who used a mobile for more than four hours a day had a 25 per cent lower sperm count than men who never used a mobile.
The men with highest usage also had greater problems with sperm quality, with the swimming ability of sperm - a crucial factor in conception - down by a third.
They had a 50 per cent drop in the number of properly formed sperm, with just one-fifth looking normal under a microscope.
Professor Ashok Agarwal, director of the Reproductive Research Centre at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, who led the study, said "Almost a billion people are using cell phones around the world and the number is growing in many countries at 20 to 30 per cent a year.

The findings are alarming but a much broader and larger study will be need to verify the results. Four hours of cell phone use per day is also a considerable amount of cell phone use but apparently not uncommon since 114 of the 360 men in the study use their cell phones for four hours or more daily.