LIVSPACE

This is an older article, published in the Wellbeing magazine (1999).

One in two Australians owns a mobile phone already, and they are here to stay. They are becoming less of a status symbol and more of a necessity of modern ‘connected’ life. That means, we need to come to terms with this new technology, whether we own one or not, and make the best of it.

In my practice as a Building Biologist, I have often come across clients, who reported health problems caused by their mobile phones and I was able to give them helpful hints on how to reduce their impact.

With this article, I hope to bring more clarity on the topic and assist readers in making informed choices. This necessarily involves a certain amount of technical information, which may be daunting for some, who may want to go straight to ‘The Good News’.

How they work

A low frequency pulse, carrying the information, travels on a high frequency microwave. As the pulse is digital (on/off) and ‘rhythmic’, it penetrates very powerfully with little energy input (the antennae on the transmission towers only have the approx. wattage of a light bulb, 50 W). This is sometimes called the Jackhammer Principle. By pulsing, a relatively small and light jackhammer is able to break through the hardest rock.

It is the pulse action, that makes mobile phone radiation considerably more dangerous to living systems (as well as technological systems, like airplanes, heart pacemakers, hospital installations), than the far more powerful TV/radio/... signals, which are emitted with up to 100,000 Watts of power. These emissions are not pulsed, however and vary in frequency and modulation, thereby causing relatively less damage.

People who have used mobile phones for 10 years or more have an increased risk of brain tumours, three European research groups have found.

The separate studies add new fuel to the debate over mobile phone safety.

A correlation between the tumour's location and the side of the head where people reported they held the phone was found in two of the studies.

One also suggests the greatest risk is in people who began using the phones before age 20. Researchers said the study group was small and more research should be done.

Two of the studies, one in England and one in Germany, are part of the 13 nation Interphone Study, an effort sanctioned by the World Health Organisation to assess possible health risks from the radiation emitted by mobile phones.

Both studies found an increased risk of glioma, an often deadly brain cancer, in people who had used mobile phones 10 years or more.

An earlier Interphone study, reported in October 2004 by researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, found an increased risk for a non-cancerous brain tumour called acoustic neuroma after 10 years of mobile phone use, but not for glioma.

"When you put the three large Interphone results together - the German, English and Swedish - they tell a story, and it begs for attention," said Louis Slesin, publisher of Microwave News, who has been reporting on the health effects of such radiation for two decades.

John Walls, vice president of public affairs for CTIA, The Wireless Association, a mobile phone industry trade group in Washington, said the increase in glioma in people who had used the phones more than 10 years was "statistically insignificant".

There is no cause for concern, he said.

The German study, conducted by Joachim Schuz and colleagues at the University of Mainz, was published online by the American Journal of Epidemiology.

The researchers compared a group of 749 brain tumour patients with 1,494 similar people who had not used mobile phones and found a doubling of the risk of glioma after 10 years of use.

They said the number of people in the study who had used the phones for 10 years was small, and the findings needed to be confirmed by other studies.

The British researchers compared a group of 966 brain tumour patients with a group of 1,716 healthy patients who had not used mobile phones.

They found a 20 per cent increase in cancers among long-term users, but no overall increased risk in people who used mobile phones.

The study, funded largely by the mobile phone industry and published online by the British Medical Journal, found a significantly increased risk for tumours that developed on the side of the head to which patients said they most often held the phone.

But lead researcher Patricia McKinney said that finding probably was due to many patients not accurately recalling which ear they'd used most of the time.

Critics said conclusions drawn by the researchers were "highly misleading" and might give mobile phone users a false sense of security

Research into tumour promotion in transgenic mice
using GSM-pulsed cell-phone exposures for up to 18 months
at relatively normal power-density levels
by Stewart Fist.
Quick Summary

The $1.2 million Adelaide Hospital research project is more than just significant -- both to humans and to cell phones. As reported, the results are above the 1% level of confidence usually credited by scientists as being "Highly Significant.", and humans get cancers in the same way as mice.

(Note: A parallel project into ELF power-line frequencies, using the same mice and same techniques, was done for the Electricity Supply Association of Australia, and the report has not yet been published)

In fact, in the 10,000 odd research reports said to have accumulated on this problem, there are few other studies in this field with such a clear-cut result -- or so relevant -- and certainly none have ben so well conducted on so many animals. A very high degree of confidence can be put in the results for a number of reasons, listed below.

And it must not be seen in isolation, because it also follows (among many others) the Lai-Singh study in Seattle which showed a radical increase in double-strand DNA breaks in rat-brains following 2 hours of exposure to microwaves. This confirms Lai-Singh and other studies showing genetic alterations in cells following reasonably low level exposures to cell phone radiations.

The Adelaide study showed a doubling of the number of tumours in mice following one hour of exposure per day, over a 9 to 18 month period.

This study doesn't exist in isolation. It just adds an extremely worrying finding to a mass of similar evidence that already exists.

MEN who regularly carry a mobile phone could have their sperm count reduced by as much as 30 per cent.

Those who place their phone near their groin, on a belt or in a pocket, are at greatest risk, new research has revealed.

The findings, to be presented at an international conference this week, are the first to suggest male fertility could be affected by the radiation emitted by mobile phones, also long suspected of causing cancer.

The study by Hungarian researchers found the sperm that did survive exposure to mobile phone radiation showed abnormal movements, further reducing fertility.

But Australian experts advised men not to panic yet.

Monash IVF's medical director Gab Kovacs said a man's sperm count "goes up and down quite a bit" and could vary greatly from one day to the next.

"You'd expect a 30 per cent variation just among men randomly," he said.

He said the test finding would need to be repeated in further research before they could be seen as conclusive.

"I wouldn't throw out my mobile phone at the moment," Professor Kovacs said.

David de Kretser, director of Andrology Australia and the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development, said it was difficult to verify the research, as it was unclear how much radiation the men had been exposed to.

The research will be presented tomorrow at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology's annual conference in Berlin.

Researchers from the University of Szeged studied 221 men for 13 months and compared the sperm of those who used their mobile phones heavily with those who did not.

Researcher Imre Fejes of the University's obstetrics and gynaecology department wrote: "The prolonged use of cell phones may have a negative effect on spermatogenesis (sperm production) and male fertility, that deteriorates both concentration and motility."

Dr Fejes said further work was needed to confirm the finding and discover how it happens.

Unlike previous studies, the researchers believe mobile phones may cause damage while in stand-by mode, when mobiles are not in use but still make regular transmission to maintain contact with radio towers.

It had been assumed such transmissions were too short to cause harm.

                                                                                                                    The Sunday Times

 1. SCALE OF EVALUATION: NINE DEGREES OF POWER, AS DOSES, OF HAZARD.

This SCALE describes NINE DEGREES OF POWER, as DOSES, of long-term radiation on

“living organisms”. At extreme radiation levels this biological aggression causes irreversible health

alteration in the genetic system and cell. This practical SCALE evaluates the health hazard and

enables to establish a long-term “precautionary principle” for mobile telephone radiation.

· PRACTICAL UNIT OF CONTROL. Power Density: microW/cm2.

The fundamental “NATURAL Power fields” are basic to evaluate the health hazard as Dose.

Health hazard as proportional to “Natural Radiation” is a fundamental and vital reference level.

Documented by the WHO publication: Fact Sheet Nº 183 World Health Organisation.