Sensitivity to electricity – Temporal changes in Austria 英文参考文献.docVIP

BMC Public Health BioMedCentral Research article Open Access Sensitivity to electricity – Temporal changes in Austria Joerg Schr?ttner* and Norbert Leitgeb? Address: Institute of Health Care Engineering, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria Email: Joerg Schr?ttner* - schroettner@tugraz.at; Norbert Leitgeb - norbert.leitgeb@tugraz.at * Corresponding author ?Equal contributors Published: 12 September 2008 Received: 28 March 2008 Accepted: 12 September 2008 BMC Public Health 2008, 8:310 doi:10.1186/1471-2458-8-310 This article is available from: /1471-2458/8/310 ? 2008 Schr?ttner and Leitgeb; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: An increasing number of persons suffer from non-specific health symptoms such as headache, sleep disturbances, difficulties in concentrating and more. In lack of a medical explanation, more and more persons take refuge to the assumption that they were electromagnetic hypersensitive (EHS) and electromagnetic pollution causes their problems. The discussion whether electromagnetic fields (EMF) could cause such adverse health effects is still ongoing. Methods: Based on the Austrian inhabitants a statistical cross-sample of the general population with regard to age, gender and federal state had been investigated to assess the actual situation and potential temporal changes in comparison with a former study of 1994. In a telephone survey a total number of 526 persons were included. Results: This study showed an actual EHS prevalence of 3.5% compared with 2% estimated in 1994. About 70% of the sample believed that electromagnetic pollution could be a risk factor for health. More than 30% declared to at least some degree to be conce