With phone in pocket all the time, can phones with high SAR and radiation cause infertility in men? May be (2024)

New Delhi,UPDATED: Feb 12, 2019 18:37 IST

That phone in your pocket, irrespective of the size, emits some amount of radiation and it might be causing infertility. While there has been a lot of talk about the phones with high SAR (specific absorption rate) value can potentially damage the body at a cellular level, particularly when you hold the phones against your ears and talk on them, not enough attention has been paid by smartphone users to the damage that these devices the radiation from them may cause to sperm.

While there is no consensus on whether smartphones cause cancer or not -- WHO says no conclusive proof and same is the opinion of the US and European regulators -- researchers are increasingly getting convinced that the radiation from phones can damage sperm and cause infertility.

There have been several studies to determine the effects of cell phone radiation on the sperm count. The 2014 study in the Central European Journal of Urology found that men who kept their phones in front pocket for long hours had lower number of sperms and a higher number of sperm cells with DNA fragmentation. One of the conclusions of the research read, "For men readying themselves for fatherhood, especially when registered fertility problems exist, it would be better to avoid holding a mobile phone in a trouser pocket for long periods of time."

In an another study conducted in 2015 by the International Journal of Fertility & Sterility also gave similar results for the sperm that were exposed to radiation for one hour. A report from Vox.com says that men may be more susceptible to phone radiation than women on fertility. This is because of the location of the ovaries and sperms. The ovaries are placed deep inside and have enough protection on them to save them from the radiation whereas the sperm cells are stored in testicl*s that sit outside the abdomen. The level of protection against the radiation is comparatively weak in this case which makes men's fertility an easy target of the radiation.

While the dark effects of phones on men's fertility is yet to proven formally, the key word is that phones emit radiation which is not good for the sperms. Every electronic device release some amount of non-ionizing radiation and the amount of these radiation that is absorbed by our body tissues is called the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). Now it depends on the amount of radiation that each phone emits. Statista, an online research portal has come up with a list of 16 smartphones that emit higher level of radiation based on the SAR value. The list includes names of brands like the Xiaomi, OnePlus and HTC.