COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF MOBILE PHONES

The widescale use of GMS mobile phones has been a stimulus to many health investigations. One focus has been the acute effects on cognitive functioning, if any, of electromagnetic fields emitted by mobile phones. Evidence so far appears conflicting. To draw the threads together, Barth and coauthors have considered 19 experimental studies published during 1999–2007, including 10 with an element of blinding that were combined in meta-analysis.1 They report that short-term exposure can cause decrements of attention and working memory, as assessed by a timed test of mental arithmetic (the subtraction test) and the so-called N-back test. However, …