Mobile Phone Study To Establish Long-Term Risks

Ministers will launch a multi-million pound, large-scale study next week into long-term health risks of mobile phone use.

Some experts warn that children should only make mobile phone calls in emergencies

The decision indicates that mobile phone use has not yet been given a clean bill of health even though a Government committee is poised to report that research shows no proven health hazards associated with mobiles.

The Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research (MTHR) programme, which has provided funding for 28 studies since 2001, will present its findings on Wednesday.

However, because cancers can take at least a decade to develop and mobile use has only been widespread for a little more than a decade, Prof Lawrie Challis, the group's chairman, believes a large study monitoring the health of users over a long period is needed.

advertisement Prof Challis has previously said that he wanted 200,000 volunteers to be monitored for at least five years to see whether those who used mobiles the most were at an increased risk of diseases including cancers, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

The MTHR has allocated £8.4 million to researchers, and most of the 23 studies so far completed have been published. Next week's report will interpret these findings and summarise other recent research.

The difficulties in designing experiments and interpreting results have been illustrated by the Interphone study - a comparison of the mobile use of 7,000 people with tumours and a similar number without across 13 countries including Britain.

The final report, by the Lyons-based International Agency for Research on Cancer, is expected to be published early next year.

However many of the groups within Interphone have already released the findings from their countries, and the interpretations of these results have been contradictory. Results from the Danish branch of the study suggested there were links between mobile use and brain tumours.

The Finnish group concluded that people who had used their phones for at least 10 years had a 39 per cent increased risk of developing nervous system tumours called gliomas on the side of their heads they held their handsets.

Findings have varied because the numbers of long-term users in the studies have been small, and researchers mainly had to rely on participants accurately reporting the length of mobile use, frequency of their calls and the side of the head they used them on. Almost all previous research on long-term effects has involved "case-control" studies in which the phone use of people with tumours was compared with matched healthy individuals.

Those leading the research may seek access to billing records from mobile operators to get around the problem of volunteers failing to report mobile use accurately.

Prof Lennart Hardell, an oncologist at the University Hospital in Orebro, Sweden, published a review combining the results of 16 previous studies in April.

This concluded those who had used a mobile for 10 years or more had double the risk of developing a glioma and were 2.4 times more likely to be diagnosed with a tumour on a nerve connecting the ear to the brain.

Prof Hardell said yesterday: "It has been shown pretty consistently in studies that there is an increased risk of brain tumours for people using mobile phones for at least 10 years.

"Cars should be fitted with external antennas, people should use hands-free kits and children should only make calls in emergencies."

2 posted on 09/08/2007 12:41:01 PM PDT by blam (Secure the border and enforce the law)

Lots of BS about imaginary risks, and little concern about real risks (traffic accidents).

3 posted on 09/08/2007 12:57:18 PM PDT by 3niner (War is one game where the home team always loses.)

A lot of states are mandating hands free sets for mobile use while driving, but there is actually a correlation with accidents even when wearing a headset.

That's not all, statisticians have proven a high correlation between use of a mobile phone inside a movie theater in a seat near me and getting punched.

4 posted on 09/08/2007 1:37:35 PM PDT by amchugh (large and largely disgruntled)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.