Pilot questionnaire survey shows the lack of diagnostic criteria for electromagnetic hypersensitivity: a viewpoint

Wireless communication devices and networks are currently prevalent in human environment. Some persons claim to be sensitive to emitted by them microwave radiation. Commonly, this sensitivity is called electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) or microwave disease. However, because of the yet scientifically unproven link between radiation exposures and EHS symptoms, this sensitivity is also called idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields (IEI-EMF). The sensitivity is not recognized by the World Health Organization as a disease or as being caused by exposures to wireless radiation. There are no medical tests for detecting sensitivity to wireless radiation. Physicians are not being educated to deal with persons who claim to be sensitive to wireless radiation. However, some persons who consider themselves to be sensitive to wireless radiation exposures claim to have medical diagnoses made by physicians or other health professionals. This project looked at the contradiction of the lack of diagnostic criteria for sensitivity to wireless radiation with the medical diagnoses claimed by some of the self-declared sensitive persons. Analysis of questionnaire responses of 142 self-declared sensitive persons suggests that, currently, it is not possible to diagnose sensitivity to wireless radiation exposures. The claimed medical diagnoses appear to be based on the anecdotal evidence presented by the self-declared sensitive persons. In some cases, medical tests were used but these tests lacked scientific proof of their ability to detect the sensitivity of a person to wireless radiation exposure. The proof of the existence of sensitivity to wireless radiation remains inadequate. However, logically and by analogy to other environmental stressors, it is likely that individual sensitivity to wireless radiation exists. Because provocation studies in wireless radiation-exposed volunteers alone seem unable to provide definite answers, further research using both, provocation and biochemical methods with controlled wireless radiation exposures in volunteers is necessary to discover diagnostic biomarkers of EHS.