Better Call Saul: is electromagnetic hypersensitivity a real health risk?

The Breaking Bad spin-off features a character who is afraid of mobile phone signals. As two scientists explain, it’s a psychological ailment – but you wouldn’t know that from browsing media reports

Better Call Saul, the long-awaited spin-off of Breaking Bad, has already thrown up some interesting questions: why is Saul chopping up cookie dough in a shopping mall? Will Mike Ehrmantraut ever let him out of the car park at the first time of asking? But perhaps most intriguing is the one raised by Saul’s brother Chuck: what is electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS)? Chuck (played by Spinal Tap’s Michael McKean) is a recluse on extended leave from his legal firm who lives without electricity and wraps himself in a shiny “space blanket” to ward off the effects of exposure to Saul’s mobile phone.

It’s an unusual condition, but Chuck is not alone. In the UK, around 4% of people report that they experience unpleasant symptoms due to exposure to electromagnetic fields given out by mobile phones, Wi-Fi routers, TVs and so on. In severe cases, it can ruin people’s lives, making them unable to work in computer-filled offices, enter shops with fluorescent lights or visit friends or family whose homes are filled with electronics. In the most extreme – and rare– cases, affected people withdraw from modern society almost entirely, living in isolated caravans or remote communities in “EMF-free zones”.

Some journalists have been quick to ally themselves to the cause of people who report EHS. Last year, we reviewed a sample of newspaper stories about the condition. About 70% presented it as probably or definitely caused by exposure to man-made electromagnetic fields. The story of a mystery illness caused by rapid technological advances is, for some, too good to pass up – a 2007 episode of Panorama, Wi-Fi: A Warning Signal, was criticised for exaggerating concerns, with the BBC’s editorial complaints unit finding it “gave a misleading impression of the state of scientific opinion on the issue”.

Politicians, too, have been supportive of the condition. Last month, a proposal by a group within the European Economic and Social Committee calling for greater recognition of the condition throughout the health, employment and social sectors came close to being passed. And one can understand the political interest – a 2010 survey of 26,602 Europeans found that 70% believed emissions from mobile phone masts affect health.

But what does the evidence say? The classic way to test whether someone is sensitive to anything noxious is to expose them to it under controlled conditions and see what happens. Dozens of such studies have been done with people who report having EHS, and the results are consistent. Those taking part do indeed experience symptoms when exposed to electromagnetic fields, more so than when exposed to a “sham” scenario involving no active exposure. But when the experiments are performed double-blind, with neither the participant nor the researcher knowing which scenario is which, these effects disappear. The symptoms are real, but they are not caused by electromagnetic fields. Instead, they seem to be triggered by something far more mysterious: the nocebo effect.

Most people have heard of the placebo effect – the tendency for people to feel better when given an inactive sugar pill by a doctor, simply because they expect to feel better. The nocebo effect is the logical flipside – the tendency for people to feel unwell when they think they have been exposed to something hazardous. The effect has been known about for centuries, and is familiar to many doctors from their university days, when undergraduates often develop the symptoms of the latest disease they have been studying, a phenomenon so common it has its own place in the medical dictionary as “medical student syndrome”. In the case of EHS, it turns out that believing that you are being exposed to electromagnetic fields, and that this is harmful, is what triggers the symptoms, not the exposure itself.

Where do these expectations and beliefs come from? The media must take part of the blame. In a recent experiment, we asked people to watch either a segment from the Panorama report about the alleged harms of Wi-Fi or an innocuous film about internet data security. We then exposed them to a fake Wi-Fi signal. Those who watched the Panorama clip were more likely to develop symptoms, particularly if they were already anxious.

Dr James Rubin and professor Sir Simon Wessely, department of psychological medicine, King’s College London

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