Comparison of Bioactivity Between GSM 900 MHz and DCS 1800 MHz Mobile Telephony Radiation

Abstract

An increasing number of studies find that pulsed Radio Frequency (RF), electromagnetic radiation of both systems of digital mobile telephony, established and commonly used in Europe during the last years, GSM 900 MHz (Global System for Mobile telecommunications) and DCS 1800 MHz (Digital Cellular System), exert intense biological action on different organisms and cells (Hardell et al., ; Hyland, ; Kundi, ; Panagopoulos et al., ). The two types of cellular telephony radiation use different carrier frequencies and give different frequency spectra, but they usually also differ in intensity, as GSM 900 MHz antennas operate at about double the power output than the corresponding DCS 1800 MHz ones. In our present experiments, we used a model biological system, the reproductive capacity of Drosophila melanogaster, to compare the biological activity between the two systems of cellular mobile telephony radiation. Both types of radiation were found to decrease significantly and non thermally the insect's reproductive capacity, but GSM 900 MHz seems to be even more bioactive than DCS 1800 MHz. The difference seems to be dependent mostly on field intensity and less on carrier frequency.

Keywords:

• Biological effects
• DCS radiation
• Drosophila
• Electromagnetic fields
• GSM
• Reproductive capacity
• RF