Assessing the risk of negative effects produced by electromagnetic fields of cellular communication on the central nervous system of children and adolescents (review). Part 2. Indicators of cognitive processes

This paper continues the authors’ review that dwells on modeling radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF EMF) and results obtained by measuring electroencephalography indicators, sensorimotor reactions, fatigue, work capacity, duration of an individual minute and the reproduction of a given rhythm in children and adolescents. Health risk assessment is always based on data obtained by either laboratory tests or epidemiological studies. This paper analyses publications that describe effects of RF EMF exposure, including Wi-Fi, on cognitive processes in children and adolescents as well as methodical approaches to investigating this exposure. However, there are few such studies; in particular, effects produced by Wi-Fi exposure on cognitive indicators of adolescents aged 14-17 years, were found only in two publications. Literature analysis has established that research findings do not always give an unambiguous estimation of RF EMF effects. The review covers the reasons for ambiguous interpretation of research results: a variable range of test-systems used for investigating indicators of cognitive processes; simultaneous analysis of single exposures including descriptions of ‘effect of improvement’ in indicators; changes in cognitive indicators registered for a group of children and adolescents in a wide age range. Nevertheless, most results give evidence of negative changes in attention and memory of children and adolescents. Given that, longitudinal studies are becoming especially relevant since they estimate changes in various indicators in dynamics, including those induced by changes in mobile phone use. The review highlights the relevance of comprehensive investigations with their focus on health outcomes of RF EMF exposure intrinsic to 5G technologies considering their global implementation.