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Representative survey on idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields in Taiwan and comparison with the international literature

BACKGROUND: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity refers to health effects attributed to electromagnetic fields (EMF) exposure and has been formally named “idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields” (IEI-EMF) by the World Health Organization. Because of the growing use of...

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Autores principales: Huang, Po-Chang, Cheng, Meng-Ting, Guo, How-Ran
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5769530/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29334987
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12940-018-0351-8
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author Huang, Po-Chang
Cheng, Meng-Ting
Guo, How-Ran
author_facet Huang, Po-Chang
Cheng, Meng-Ting
Guo, How-Ran
author_sort Huang, Po-Chang
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity refers to health effects attributed to electromagnetic fields (EMF) exposure and has been formally named “idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields” (IEI-EMF) by the World Health Organization. Because of the growing use of cell phones, IEI-EMF has become a global public health concern. A survey in 2007 in Taiwan showed that the prevalence rate of IEI-EMF was 13.3%, which is higher than rates in studies conducted previously. The survey also found that the rate was higher in women. METHODS: To evaluate whether the prevalence rate of IEI-EMF is increasing and to verify the higher risk in women, we conducted a nationwide questionnaire survey using the same methods as the 2007 survey to assess the change in the prevalence rate of IEI-EMF in Taiwan. We also conducted a review of the literature and a meta-analysis to evaluate the changes in the prevalence rate around the world. RESULTS: On the basis of the representative sample of 3303 participants, we found that the prevalence rate of IEI-EMF in Taiwan declined from 13.3% to 4.6% over a period of 5 years. The literature review also found the prevalence rates in other countries to be decreasing, instead of increasing as predicted previously. The meta-analysis of the data from the literature showed that women are more likely to have IEI-EMF than men, with an odds ratio of 1.19 (95% confidence interval: 1.01—1.40). CONCLUSIONS: We found the prevalence rate of IEI-EMF has been declining, instead of increasing as predicted previously. Women are more likely to report having IEI-EMF than men. Further studies to explore the causes leading to the declines may help the public, scientific community, and government deal with idiopathic intolerance to other environmental exposures.
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spelling pubmed-57695302018-01-25 Representative survey on idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields in Taiwan and comparison with the international literature Huang, Po-Chang Cheng, Meng-Ting Guo, How-Ran Environ Health Research BACKGROUND: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity refers to health effects attributed to electromagnetic fields (EMF) exposure and has been formally named “idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields” (IEI-EMF) by the World Health Organization. Because of the growing use of cell phones, IEI-EMF has become a global public health concern. A survey in 2007 in Taiwan showed that the prevalence rate of IEI-EMF was 13.3%, which is higher than rates in studies conducted previously. The survey also found that the rate was higher in women. METHODS: To evaluate whether the prevalence rate of IEI-EMF is increasing and to verify the higher risk in women, we conducted a nationwide questionnaire survey using the same methods as the 2007 survey to assess the change in the prevalence rate of IEI-EMF in Taiwan. We also conducted a review of the literature and a meta-analysis to evaluate the changes in the prevalence rate around the world. RESULTS: On the basis of the representative sample of 3303 participants, we found that the prevalence rate of IEI-EMF in Taiwan declined from 13.3% to 4.6% over a period of 5 years. The literature review also found the prevalence rates in other countries to be decreasing, instead of increasing as predicted previously. The meta-analysis of the data from the literature showed that women are more likely to have IEI-EMF than men, with an odds ratio of 1.19 (95% confidence interval: 1.01—1.40). CONCLUSIONS: We found the prevalence rate of IEI-EMF has been declining, instead of increasing as predicted previously. Women are more likely to report having IEI-EMF than men. Further studies to explore the causes leading to the declines may help the public, scientific community, and government deal with idiopathic intolerance to other environmental exposures. BioMed Central 2018-01-15 /pmc/articles/PMC5769530/ /pubmed/29334987 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12940-018-0351-8 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Huang, Po-Chang
Cheng, Meng-Ting
Guo, How-Ran
Representative survey on idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields in Taiwan and comparison with the international literature
title Representative survey on idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields in Taiwan and comparison with the international literature
title_full Representative survey on idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields in Taiwan and comparison with the international literature
title_fullStr Representative survey on idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields in Taiwan and comparison with the international literature
title_full_unstemmed Representative survey on idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields in Taiwan and comparison with the international literature
title_short Representative survey on idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields in Taiwan and comparison with the international literature
title_sort representative survey on idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields in taiwan and comparison with the international literature
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5769530/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29334987
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12940-018-0351-8
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