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Study Hints That Wi-Fi Near Testes Could Decrease Male Fertility
Pierre Bezukhov submits news of a report that "a laptop connected wirelessly to the internet on the lap near the testes may result in decreased male fertility," writing
"'[The scientists who conducted the research] placed healthy sperms under a laptop running a Wi-Fi connection. After four hours, the Wi-Fi exposed sperms showed 'a significant decrease in progressive sperm motility and an increase in sperm DNA fragmentation' compared to healthy sperms stored for the same time in the same temperature away from the computer. That is, the sperms exposed to Wi-Fi were less capable of moving towards an egg to fertilize it and less capable of passing on the male's DNA if it does fertilize an egg.' The scientists blamed the damage on non-thermal electromagnetic radiation generated by the Wi-Fi."
However, the experiment was based on sperm outside the body; the researchers (here's the abstract from their study) note that "Further in vitro and in vivo studies are needed to prove this contention."
and still people will use this as FUD for the next 3 decades.
They don't say what the compute was displaying. Porn has been known to effect the movement of sperms.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
...a tinfoil codpiece!
Trolling aside, this experiment doesn't sound like it had a control group, ie a laptop with no wi-fi being held over your balls. Heat in that area is known to decrease fertility. The experiment as described in the summary has nothing to do with wi-fi.
(no, I didn't RTFA).
which is totally what she said
Yet every modern laptop has its wifi antennas carefully routed alongside the screen so that their polarization will match the WAP's polarization. Laptops get hot. Sperm want to live at 97F (definitely not at 98.6, which is average body temperature). What have they previously published? I smell an agenda.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
"Non-thermal electromagnetic radiation" means that electromagnetic radiation caused the effect through a nonthermal mechanism. It's a common idea in EM fear circles (because the output from EM devices is too low to cause damage by a thermal mechanism). It doesn't say anything about heat, one way or another. You can have thermal damage from EM radiation without any application of heat. That's what your microwave oven does.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Most things placed near testes tend to decrease male fertility.
Briefs, jeans, angry women...
I am John Hurt.
The abstract specifically states that the control group was a set of identical samples, under the same incubation regime, without the laptop. So no, they didn't control for the idea that the laptop alone could've caused the effect
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Here's the kicker - they ran the laptop with the wifi switched off, but only measured the RF output of the laptop in that state. They didn't perform - or performed, but didn't publish - the obvious control experiment.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You could bedazzle your balls with aluminum sequins, that will maintain full sack flexibility while guarding your nuts from the wifi waves, and you'll have DISCO BALLS! XD
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That news report is wrong. The seperate test in question evaluated the RF output of a laptop with its wifi switched off, but it did not measure sperm motility after exposure to that laptop:
"A separate test with a laptop that was on, but not wirelessly connected, found negligible EM radiation from the machine alone."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45469130/ns/health-mens_health/#.TtT0PlabUlT
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Therefore did not test to see if any gasses released from the plastics in the laptop could be the effect. They are testing cells exposed to the environment not inside of it's intended sealed container.
Lots of variables they did not account for.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Go ahead and do it. It's been five years for me and it's great. Everything still works.
Of course, don't even consider it unless you already have children and you are in a long-term committed and successful relationship.
Nowadays, they do it with laser beams and you don't have have sore nuts for a week or anything. My doctor gave me a tootsie pop (seriously) after he was done and it was great! I'd go do it again, but it would be kind of redundant, I think. Man, I loved that tootsie pop. It was the grape, which is my favorite.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They put the laptop 3CM above the sperm and tried to control the temperature from below and via air conditioning. If I got it right while skimming through it, they also measured sperm temp every 5min using an infrared thermometer.
However the control was NOT a laptop with the wifi turned off but a setting with no exposure to electrical equipment at all. Which is not a control for WiFi but a control for a "Laptop with Wifi on".
Which leads me to think that the reason they chose this setup was that they couldn't get a useful result when using a laptop without WiFi as a control. The effect could in theory be caused by any part or combination of parts inside the laptop.
I take reports of damage to cells in a dish with a grain of salt. This isn't a natural environment for the cells, and it is incredibly easy to harm them accidentally in a variety of ways. When the phenomenon is unlikely to begin with (damage to cells from photons that individually don't carry enough energy to produce lasting changes in any biological molecule), place your bets on "artifact."
Funny analogy, but what OP is hinting at is the intuitive notion that all radiation interacts with objects roughly its "size", i.e. wavelength. A better analogy for this would be if a bunch of people, ranging from tiny elves to enormous giants, tried to grab a badger -- the elves would only be able to grab a single hair on it, and the giant could grab the mountain it's sitting on but the badger could escape between his fingers. Only a person of just the right size could actually grab the badger. So, for example, IR interacts with large molecules thus heating them, which is why objects that are just hot enough to glow a little red feel so hot from a distance; UV is much smaller wavelengths, so it tents to break up large molecules (e.g. DNA), thus causing cancer and killing bacteria (essentially acting as poison for them); xrays interact at an atomic level, which is why they are so useful in imaging -- individual atoms block/"refract" them in different ways, creating different patterns (e.g. in xray crystallography); finally, gamma rays are so tiny that they interact with nuclei, and are capable of being absorbed by said nuclei which then become radioactive themselves (i.e. "hold on" to the gamma ray for a while and release the energy after some random period of time), or of breaking off individual protons/neutrons from the nucleus, or even splitting it up. This intuition can get you pretty far, but it doesn't explain everything -- for example, microwaves heat things through an entirely different mechanism, as some people mentioned above.
weinersmith
All computers emit RF radiation when they're running, whether or not they even have WiFi installed. Regulations require manufacturers to limit this radiation, but it's still there; and with a computer in very close proximity to a test subject, (spermatozoon, human, or otherwise), it's probably a toss-up as to whether any effects attributable to RF radiation are a result of WiFi, or of the 1GHz+ processor, the switching power supplies, and any of several other possible sources of radio frequency energy.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
This subthread seems to be a great hangout for EEs who don't understand physics.
Your "compelling explanation" is not an explanation, but a statement of the effect. The explanation for the effect is *precisely* that the EM wave causes the polar molecules to jiggle in response, thus heating them, and the Newtonian reaction to that is that the jiggling molecules themselves create EM waves which are out-of-phase with the primary wave and hence attenuate it through interference. Thus, from a macro point of view you see that the waves are attenuated and you say "where did the energy go? oh it's in the water - water must be a lossy medium for 2.4GHz waves." But the micro point of view is the actual *explanation* - it tells you *why* water is lossy at 2.4GHz (and not so much at lower frequencies). It's because 2.4GHz is around about the resonant frequency of the jiggles.
To put it another way, the microwaves don't make the water molecules jiggle by raising the temperature - the microwaves make the water molecules jiggle *directly*, through direct interaction of the EM wave with the charges on the molecules. The temperature rise is a *consequence* of that (the other consequence being attenuation of the microwaves).