Cellphones and Your Blood: What You Need to Know

Cellphones and Your Blood: What You Need to Know
Environmental Health Trust, Feb 11, 2025

Most of us interact with wireless technology daily, regularly using cellphones and Wi-Fi routers, but an important new study questions just how safe these devices may be. This innovative investigation finds that keeping phones close to the body can cause unhealthy changes in the blood — changes known as rouleaux formation.

Can Cellphones Make Blood Clump Together?

Researchers have found that a living person closely exposed to cellphone radiation, develops red blood cells that begin sticking together, forming clumps that resemble stacks of coins. This in vivo effect has the potential to cause a number of health issues, since clumped blood cells flow less easily and can therefore impact oxygen delivery in the body. The clumps are called rouleaux, and the effect is called rouleaux formation.

Previously, this rouleaux reaction to cellphone exposure had been reported only in studies carried out in vitro, in blood cell samples placed on microscope slides. But this method isn’t always reliable, since blood clumping can sometimes result from the way the sample is prepared.

 
A New Study: Blood Cells Clumping in Real Time

Dr. Robert Brown, Vice President of Scientific Research and Clinical Affairs for the Environmental Health Trust and a diagnostic radiologist with extensive experience evaluating blood flow using diagnostic ultrasound, and his colleague Barbara Biebrich, a senior ultrasound technologist with decades of experience performing vascular ultrasounds, decided to test whether ultrasound could detect and display rouleaux blood clumps forming in real time, in a healthy volunteer.

Here’s what happened during the case study: 

• At the direction of Dr. Brown, Ms. Biebrich scanned a healthy person’s blood flow in the back of the knee using real-time videos of through established methods of ultrasound. These same methods are regularly used to find evidence of blood clots that should be treated before they can go on to lead to pulmonary embolisms or stroke.
• At first, everything looked normal; the blood was flowing smoothly, leaving a solid black stripe.
• A working cellphone (not making a call) was then placed near the person’s knee for just five minutes.
• An ultrasound after exposure showed that the blood in the vein was no longer clearly flowly, but included white spots that had clumped into rouleaux formation.

To make sure this wasn’t a one-time occurrence, the team repeated the experiment two more times over the next few months – and got the same results.

 
Why Does This Matter?

Here are some things that happen when red blood cells stick together: 

• They may not carry oxygen as efficiently, which could affect metabolism (how the body turns food into energy).
• Blood flow could slow down, potentially leading to blockages in small blood vessels. In extreme cases, this might contribute to strokes or heart problems.
• People with conditions like diabetes or COVID-related blood vessel damage might be at higher risk of serious complications from blood clots.
• Up until now, rouleaux formation has been associated with infectious and inflammatory processes, connective tissue diseases, and some forms of cancer. Radiofrequency radiation exposure from cellphones, and likely other technologies utilizing wireless communication, can now be added to that list of things that can cause this abnormality of the blood.

While rouleaux formation is usually temporary in healthy people, scientists don’t yet know how long it lasts or how common it is after cellphone exposure. Nor do we know whether rouleaux formation occurs in the veins and arteries of the heart, head, and neck.

 
What Can You Do?

Further research is needed to clarify the extent of this problem. In the meantime, it makes sense to reduce the risk of blood clumps. Here are some easy steps to limit cell phone radiation exposure: 

• Don’t carry your phone in your pocket or bra – keep it on a table or in a bag when possible.
• Use speakerphone or wired headphones instead of holding the phone to your ear
• Put your phone on airplane mode when you don’t need to use it.

What’s next?

Researchers at EHT and a major university are planning a larger scale study to learn more, but in the meantime, remember: distance is your friend!

To see intriguing before and after video clips and learn more about this study, see the peer-reviewed journal article published this week in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine.

https://ehtrust.org/cellphones-and-your-blood-what-you-need-to-know/