PériTox Laboratory, UMR-I 01 INERIS, Picardie Jules Verne University, 80025, Amiens, France.
PériTox Laboratory, UMR-I 01 INERIS, Picardie Jules Verne University, 80025, Amiens, France.
Environ Pollut. 2020 Jan;256:113461. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2019.113461. Epub 2019 Oct 25.
Electrohypersensitive people attribute various symptoms to exposure of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF); sleep disturbance is the most frequently cited. However, laboratory experiments have yielded conflicting results regarding sleep alterations. Our hypothesis was that exposure to RF-EMF alone would lead to slight or non-significant effects but that co-exposure to RF-EMFs and other environmental constraints (such as noise) would lead to significant effects.
3-week-old male Wistar rats (4 groups, n = 12 per group) were exposed for 5 weeks to continuous RF-EMF (900 MHz, 1.8 V/m, SAR = 30 mW/kg) in the presence or absence of high-level noise (87.5 dB, 50-20000 Hz) during the rest period. After 5 weeks of exposure, sleep (24 h recording), food and water intakes, and body weight were recorded with or without RF-EMF and/or noise. At the end of this recording period, sleep was scored during the 1 h resttime in the absence of noise and of RF-EMF exposure.
Exposure to RF-EMF and/or noise was associated with body weight gain, with hyperphagia in the noise-only and RF-EMF + noise groups and hypophagia in the RF-EMF-only group. Sleep parameters recording over 24 h highlighted a higher frequency of active wakefulness in the RF-EMF-only group and a lower non-rapid eye movement/rapid eye movement sleep ratio during the active period in the noise-only group. There were no differences in sleep duration in either group. During the 1-h, constraint-free sleep recording, sleep rebound was observed in the noise-only group but not in the RF-EMF-only and RF-EMF + noise groups.
Our study showed effects of RF-EMF, regardless of whether or not the animals were also exposed to noise. However, the RF-EMF + noise group presented no exacerbation of those effects. Our results did not support the hypothesis whereby the effects of RF-EMF on physiological functions studied are only visible in animals exposed to both noise and RF-EMF.
电过敏人群将各种症状归因于射频电磁场（RF-EMF）的暴露；睡眠障碍是最常被引用的。然而，关于睡眠改变的实验室实验结果却存在矛盾。我们的假设是，仅暴露于 RF-EMF 会导致轻微或无显著影响，但同时暴露于 RF-EMF 和其他环境限制因素（如噪声）会导致显著影响。
3 周龄雄性 Wistar 大鼠（每组 4 只，n=12）在休息期间连续 5 周暴露于连续 RF-EMF（900 MHz，1.8 V/m，SAR=30 mW/kg），同时存在或不存在高声级噪声（87.5 dB，50-20000 Hz）。暴露 5 周后，在有或没有 RF-EMF 和/或噪声的情况下记录睡眠（24 小时记录）、食物和水摄入量以及体重。在这段记录期结束时，在没有噪声和 RF-EMF 暴露的情况下，在休息时间的 1 小时内对睡眠进行评分。
暴露于 RF-EMF 和/或噪声与体重增加有关，仅噪声组和 RF-EMF+噪声组表现为摄食量增加，而 RF-EMF 仅组表现为摄食量减少。24 小时记录的睡眠参数突出显示 RF-EMF 仅组中活跃觉醒的频率更高，而在仅噪声组中活跃期的非快速眼动/快速眼动睡眠比例较低。两组的睡眠时间均无差异。在 1 小时、无约束的睡眠记录期间，仅噪声组观察到睡眠反弹，但 RF-EMF 仅组和 RF-EMF+噪声组则没有。
我们的研究表明 RF-EMF 会产生影响，无论动物是否同时暴露于噪声。然而，RF-EMF+噪声组并未加剧这些影响。我们的结果不支持 RF-EMF 对所研究的生理功能的影响仅在同时暴露于噪声和 RF-EMF 的动物中可见的假设。
