Mobile phone use and temporal skin heat sensation

Elmountacer-Billah Elabbassi (1) , René de Seze (1)

1 INERIS - Institut National de l'Environnement Industriel et des Risques

Epidemiological investigation of mobile phone (MP) users reported symptoms of discomfort feeling, warmth behind/around or on the ear and heat sensation of the cheek. These symptoms may be due to thermal insulation, conduction of the heat produced in the phone by the battery currents and running of the radiofrequency (RF) electronic circuits, and electromagnetic field (EMF) energy absorbed by the user's head. Using a Luxtron 790 fiberoptic thermometer we measured the temperature of the temporal skin due to GSM 1800 MHz MP radiated power (125 mW). We suppressed the EMF exposure by switching the RF signal from the antenna to a 50 O load. The ambient air temperature was 23°C and the MP was held in the normal position of use for 30 minutes to reach the thermal steady state. With a switched off MP, the increase in skin temperature was statistically significant 1.88°C. When MP was switched on, the increase was 2.93°C in reception mode, 3.29°C in emission mode without load and 3.31°C in emission mode with load. The temperature difference with or without load was not significant (tl7 = 0.707; p = 0.489), which means that the contribution of EMF absorption to skin heating is negligible. The result suggests that the heat sensations reported by the MP users are exclusively caused by thermal insulation and heat conduction from MP associated with long calling time.

Domains: Toxicology; Environmental Sciences

Elmountacer-Billah Elabbassi, René de Seze. Mobile phone use and temporal skin heat sensation. 3. International workshop on biological effects of electromagnetic fields, Oct 2004, Kos, Greece. pp.543-548. ⟨ineris-00972473⟩