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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Radiation and Health
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1481537
This article is part of the Research Topic Individual Sensitivity to Wireless Radiation View all articles

Does Radiofrequency Radiation Impact Sleep? A Double-Blind, Randomised, Placebo-Controlled, Crossover Pilot Study

Provisionally accepted
Nicole Bijlsma Nicole Bijlsma 1*Gerard Kennedy Gerard Kennedy 2Marc Cohen Marc Cohen 3Russell Conduit Russell Conduit 1
  • 1 STEM College, RMIT University, Bundoora, Australia
  • 2 Federation University Australia, Ballarat, Australia
  • 3 Extreme Wellness Institute, Melbourne, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The most common source of Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Field (RF-EMF) exposures during sleep includes digital devices, yet there are no studies investigating the impact of multi-night exposure to electromagnetic fields emitted from a baby monitor on sleep under real-world conditions in healthy adults. Given the rise in the number of people reporting to be sensitive to manmade electromagnetic fields, the ubiquitous use of Wi-Fi enabled digital devices and the lack of real-world data, we investigated the effect of 2.45 GHz radiofrequency exposure during sleep on subjective sleep quality, and objective sleep measures, heart rate variability and actigraphy in healthy adults. This pilot study was a 4-week randomised, double-blind, crossover trial of 12 healthy adults. After a one-week run-in period, participants were randomised to exposure from either an active or inactive (sham) baby monitor for 7 nights and then crossed over to the alternate intervention after a one-week washout period.Subjective and objective assessments of sleep included the Pittsburgh Insomnia Rating Scale (PIRS-20), electroencephalography (EEG), actigraphy and heart rate variability (HRV) derived from electrocardiogram. Sleep quality was reduced significantly (p<0.05) and clinically meaningful during RF-EMF exposure compared to sham-exposure as indicated by the PIRS-20 scores. Furthermore, at higher frequencies (gamma, beta and theta bands), EEG power density significantly increased during the Non-Rapid Eye Movement sleep (p<0.05). No statistically significant differences in HRV or actigraphy were detected. Our findings suggest that exposure to a 2.45 GHz radiofrequency device (baby monitor) may impact sleep in some people under real-world conditions however further largescale real-world investigations with specified dosimetry are required to confirm these findings.

    Keywords: electropollution, Electromagnetic Fields, Heart rate variability, insomnia, non-ionising radiation, Sleep, Sleep EEG, Wi-Fi

    Received: 16 Aug 2024; Accepted: 18 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Bijlsma, Kennedy, Cohen and Conduit. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Nicole Bijlsma, STEM College, RMIT University, Bundoora, Australia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.