Described by Sir Richard Branson as “underpants for superheroes”, a British scientist has unveiled Wireless Armour, a new line of ‘smart, wearable tech’ underwear which aims to protect male fertility by using a mesh of pure silver woven into fabric to shield against 99.9 percent of harmful electromagnetic radiation (EMR) emitted by WiFi devices.
It is estimated that 70 million couples are affected by infertility worldwide. Male fertility has declined in recent years and this has been attributed to exposure to environmental factors including electromagnetic radiation emitted by WiFi enabled devices such as smartphones and laptops which have been shown in clinical studies to lower sperm count and motility in men. In 2014, the University of Exeter conducted a comprehensive review of all the data from previous studies investigating the link between EMR and sperm damage the and the analysis indicated a negative associations between mobile phone exposure on sperm viability and motility. Whilst the findings are not 100 percent conclusive it does show a strong correlation between EMR exposure and lower sperm health.
In one study in vitro sperm motility dropped to 49 percent and viability to 52 percent after just one hour of exposure to radiation emitted by a mobile phone. Additionally, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has assigned EMR as possibly carcinogenic to humans, in the category 2B, the same category as petrol exhaust fumes and other pollutants.
“Like so many people, my smartphone and laptop use has increased dramatically in recent years which made me realise that I was exposing myself to large amounts of electromagnetic radiation, mostly centred on my groin”, said the London scientist and Wireless Armour inventor, Joseph Perkins, in a written statement. “With my Physics background I knew there must be a way to shield from electromagnetic radiation using a simple solution. Wireless Armour has been tested by an industry leader in wireless shielding and the results show that our fabric shields against 99.9 percent of the radiation emitted between 100MHz to 2.6GHz. Put simply, this covers the entire range of radiation emitted by wireless devices, from voice and text through to 4G and WiFi, almost everything is blocked.”
How Wireless Armour works
- Wireless Armour has a mesh of pure silver woven into the fabric which creates an unbroken shield
- The mesh disrupts the flow of electromagnetic radiation due to silver being a conductor of electricity
- The electromagnetic radiation becomes distributed evenly around the silver mesh and stops the electromagnetic radiation from flowing through it
- The silver is weaved into the cotton to produce an extremely flexible soft fabric which lengthens the lifetime of Wireless Armour by increasing its strength
- The silver fibres in Wireless Armour are highly anti-microbial, which means they increase hygiene by preventing the spread of bacteria and other microbes that cause smells
Image Credit: Wireless Armour