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> Yes, there have been numerous studies showing that the radio frequencies (radiation) used by cell phones and wifi are correlated (maybe causative, but not 100% sure) to reduced sperm count and quality.

Do you have some references?

> This is especially true when you have your phone in your pocket or your laptop on your lap.

Are you sure you're not mixing up heat and radiation here? OK, technically radiative heat is radiation, but surely that's not what you meant. Sitting outside on a warm day with a pillow on your crotch probably isn't good for your sperm either, but it doesn't seem honest to chalk that up to radiation (even though technically radiative may have warmed you in the first place).

> Not to mention it seems we have more commercial exposure too. We have GPS, satellite TV, StarLink, cell towers, etc all vying for 100% coverage. However, I didn't look up the wavelengths, so these might not be an issue, or might cause some other kind of issue.

I'm sorry, this is pure speculation unless you can back it up by something. "We didn't have all these things in the past" isn't an argument for anything. It's like claiming that the cumulative number of HN comments is rising while sperm quality is decreasing, hence HN is killing sperm.

> I guess I'm just saying it should be no surprise that sperm count and quality is decreasing if we know that certain RF is linked to it and we are increasing that RF exposure.

Do we know that those kinds of RF are linked to it? X-rays to your balls, sure! But GPS and cellphones? Evidence, please.

"Do you have some references?"

Here's one of many if you google. https://natural-fertility-info.com/study-wi-fi-laptop-comput...

"Are you sure you're not mixing up heat and radiation here?"

I'm not. If you look at my other statements in my comment, you will see that distance plays an important part in RF exposure. Energy dissipates rapidly and is generally minimal beyond 6' when we are talking about sub-watt consumer devices.

"Not to mention it seems we have more commercial exposure too. We have GPS, satellite TV, StarLink, cell towers, etc all vying for 100% coverage. However, I didn't look up the wavelengths, so these might not be an issue, or might cause some other kind of issue."

You quoted me in the above and complained about speculation. You can see in the italics that I acknowledge that I don't know if the distant transmitters cause problems or not.

"Do we know that those kinds of RF are linked to it? X-rays to your balls, sure! But GPS and cellphones? Evidence, please."

I've already linked one study. I'm not going to google everything for you. You can us PubMed too.

I'd also like to ask where your evidence is that it is harmless? Did you also miss the study that said specific brain cancer incidence is raised by holding a cell phone to your head? It seems your position that it's all harmless is just speculation.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cell-phones/what-the-cell-ph...

> > "Do you have some references?" > > Here's one of many if you google. https://natural-fertility-info.com/study-wi-fi-laptop-comput...

A blog post by "Dalene Barton - Certified Herbalist, Birth Doula". Lol, you've got to be kidding me?!

> You quoted me in the above and complained about speculation. You can see in the italics that I acknowledge that I don't know if the distant transmitters cause problems or not.

So why bring them up? Moreover: You also don't know if the close ones do. I mean, your herbalist does, but that doesn't count ;-)

> I've already linked one study.

"Study". Something peer-reviewed, please. It can be done by a herbalist if you insist, but it needs to be peer-reviewed by actual experts.

> I'd also like to ask where your evidence is that it is harmless?

That no harm has been found. The same class of evidence you rely on when you eat a carrot and wonder whether it's poisonous or not.

> Did you also miss the study that said specific brain cancer incidence is raised by holding a cell phone to your head?

Glanced at it now. Please correct tme if I'm wrong, but is it really true that that they did a study with n=90 rats and used the occurrance of 2 cases of tumors in them, versus 0 in the control, as evidence???

"A blog post by "Dalene Barton - Certified Herbalist, Birth Doula". Lol, you've got to be kidding me?!"

I'm not citing the blog. The blog merely explains the results of the study. It is a peer reviewed study available through Elseiver.

"That no harm has been found. The same class of evidence you rely on when you eat a carrot and wonder whether it's poisonous or not."

Let's see your peer reviewed articles that prove it - that was the standard for evidence that you set in your comment.

"Glanced at it now. Please correct tme if I'm wrong, but is it really true that that they did a study with n=90 rats and used the occurrance of 2 cases of tumors in them, versus 0 in the control, as evidence???"

I gave you one example. Please do some research of your own instead of just trolling.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25738972/

Here is another later study that shows no correlation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5303122/

There is a lot of speculation and no confirmed mechanism for a milliwatt microwave transmitter to damage human sperm.

Would you be worried about a blinking led light near you? Thats the power levels we are dealing with and the visible light has much higher photon energy closer to ionizing being in the terahertz range.

Meanwhile go take a nice walk outside under the 1000 watt per square meter nuclear fusion radiator that includes many watts of actual cancer causing near ionizing radiation.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=cell+phone+sperm+count

> Here's one of many if you google. https://natural-fertility-info.com/study-wi-fi-laptop-comput...

So, a quick rebuttal to this trash blog post recounting a trash publication. This is a cut-and-paste from a real rebuttal (Dore & Chignol, Fertility & Sterility, 2012), transcribed here for easy browsing. Link at the end:

"We think that the evidence presented in this article cannot support the claim that the observed effects are non-thermal and caused by exposure to a Wi-Fi radiofrequency electromagnetic field."

1. Keeping constant the temperature under the computer by an air conditioning system is not sufficient to ensure homo-geneity of the temperatures within the experimental area, be-cause the heat source from the laptop is not homogenous itself, and to exclude that there is no local variation in the samples temperatures. If the exposure design can be justified by the desire of being as close as possible to the actual conditions of use of a lap-top computer, the dosimetry used in these experiments is much too simplistic. There is no indication of the homogeneity of the field under the laptop, which may greatly depend upon the location of the Wi-Fi antenna within the computer.

2. The control samples,‘‘kept in another room away fromany computers or electronic devices,’’were not actually keptunder identical conditions. A more suitable experimental de-sign would have been a sham exposure design in which con-trol samples would have been exposed under the sameactively working computer, but with its Wi-Fi emission turned off.

3. Moreover, Avendano et al. state that‘‘[radiofrequency electromagnetic waves] from mobile phones may cause DNA damage’’and that‘‘research has shown negative consequences of electromagnetic fields on biological mechanisms,’’and they cite in support of their contention a highly controversial article(cite2). Genotoxicity of radiofrequencies is not a matter of opinion: radiofrequency energy absorption cannot break DNA molecules, and it should be kept in mind that there is no known biologically plausible mechanism by which non-ionizing radio waves of low energy can disrupt DNA(cite3). Recently, while classifying radiofrequency electromagneticfields (RF-EMF) as‘‘possibly carcinogenic to humans’’(group2B), the International Agency for Research on Cancer Working Group reached the overall conclusion that there is only weak mechanistic evidence relevant to RF-EMF–induced cancer in humans(cite4)

The conclusion of the rebuttal: "There is a serious message behind our rebuttal. Citing Avendano et al.(cite1) among the evidence of an association between Wi-Fi exposure and a genotoxic effect on humans perm would demonstrate how studies with an erroneous methodology can be used to support important public health claims and also the weakness of the evidence purporting to demonstrate a non thermal effect of Wi-Fi RF."

cite2: Diem et al. 2005 Non-thermal DNA break-age by mobile-phone radiation (1800 MHz) in human fibroblasts and in trans-formed GFSH-R17 rat granulosa cells in vitro.

cite3: Moulder at al. 2005, Mobile phones, mobil ephone base stations and cancer: a review.

cite4: Baan et al. 2011, Carcinogenicity of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields

Link: https://sci-hub.do/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2012.01.102

Plenty of info to choose from here instead of reading trash rebuttals that didn't attempt the replicate the study with the controls they are complaining about.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=cell+phone+sperm+count

One of the first results claims that using the internet resulted in a larger decrease to sperm count than using a cell phone.

And all of the studies that claimed to show a link between cell phone use and decreased sperm were based on surveys of patients at fertility clinics, or were based on subjecting rat testicles to 1000x the amount of radiation that a human would encounter in the real world.

You may want to rethink your citations.

I'm not saying it's the only cause, just that it's one of them. They're not exactly going to blast human testicles with radiation. These sort of animal tests and surveys (couple with clinical evaluation) are standard practice for many medical research topics.

Where do you see the radiation level being 1000x? I see various studies using real cell phones on the market for between 2 and 6 hours per day.

Non ionizing radiation doesn't have an effect on our bodies unless it's very high energy e.g. you're right next to a high powered transmitter (radio tower).

That's not exactly true. VHF can cause ocular issues due to heat buildup under the right circumstances. You can have this issue with extended use at relatively low power (<100 watts) if the distance is close (think ham sitting next to their antenna).

This is thermal heating which is the very well known mechanism for non ionizing radiation to affect the body (microwave oven cooking).

Cell phones put out about 1000 times less power than your 100w ham radio. Which in itself is not enough to cause ocular heating damage unless perhaps it was within inches of your eye, I have never seen a case of it caused at that power level please point me to citations.

Remember these are omni radiators only a small fraction of the 100w ham radio power would strike your eye even inches away and it would fall off with the inverse square law.

Putting a 100w lightbulb against your eye would also cause damage or a 1 watt laser both due to ocular heating. This is all about the amount of wattage absorbed by your body tissue which is why exposure levels are rated in watts per kilogram, the more tissue the more power it takes to raise that tissues temperature to damaging levels. This is a why a focus laser with little power can cause damage vs a omni directional light or radio source.

I understand all that (except you are confusing laser damage with heat damage). The prior comment was saying that non-ionizing radiation is harmless unless next to a radio tower, which isn't true.

Lasers damage biological tissue in 2 ways, thermal (heat damage) and photochemical which is similar to sunburn caused by guess what high frequency light. There is also acoustical damage which is essentially thermal causing shockwaves from tissue vaporization [1]. Remember higher frequencies have more photon energy leading into ionizing radiation at UV and above? Below a certain frequency all damage is THERMAL.

Radio waves are much lower frequency and therefore the ONLY KNOWN mechanisms for biological activity is thermal but you seem to dispute that.

And yes it is true you will not get significant ocular heating unless next to a high power radio tower. This will not occur a 100w ham radio levels as you said and certainly won't occur from cell phones 3 orders of magnitude lower than that.

1. https://ehs.princeton.edu/book/export/html/363

Having a warm/hot laptop on your lap is definitely not a good idea for fertility.

what’s the solution? cabin in the woods and commute to work, fewer IoT devices, keep phone out of pocket, and?

All I do is schedule wifi to turn off when I am typically sleeping, phone out of pocket when home, phone on speaker when using it, and I don't really have any IoT devices.

I'm not saying everyone should do this, but that's what I do.