Catherine Hanrahan
Radiation from the laptop connected to Wi-Fi was three times higher than without Wi-Fi, and at least seven times higher than control conditions.
USING a laptop connected to the internet via Wi-Fi could be decreasing men’s fertility by affecting their sperm quality, a new study suggests.
Researchers conducted a simple experiment comparing sperm samples from 29 healthy donors left under a Wi-Fi connected laptop computer for four hours with sperm samples kept away from any electronic device.
They found that progressive sperm motility was 80% in the control sperm compared with only 69% in the sperm sample exposed to the Wi-Fi laptop.
The drop in motile sperm corresponded to an increase in non-motile sperm of around 25% in the sperm exposed to the laptop, compared to 14% in the control sperm.
Similarly, more than twice the number of sperm, 8.6%, had fragmented DNA in the sample exposed to the laptop compared with only 3.3% of control sperm.
“Our findings suggest that prolonged use of portable computers sitting on the lap of a male user may decrease sperm fertility potential,” the authors from Argentina said.
Radiation from the laptop connected to Wi-Fi was three times higher than without Wi-Fi, and at least seven times higher than control conditions.
The authors speculated that the detrimental effect on sperm quality was due to radiofrequency electromagnetic waves, not a thermal effect, because temperature was controlled during the experiment.
