Love for Life

Mobile phones 'more dangerous than smoking' - Brain expert warns of huge rise in tumours and calls on industry to take immediate steps to reduce radiation
By Geoffrey Lean
Sunday, 30 March 2008

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.

The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.

It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.

Earlier this year, the French government warned against the use of mobile phones, especially by children. Germany also advises its people to minimise handset use, and the European Environment Agency has called for exposures to be reduced.

Professor Khurana – a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years, has published more than three dozen scientific papers – reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has put the results on a brain surgery website, and a paper based on the research is currently being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.

He admits that mobiles can save lives in emergencies, but concludes that "there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours". He believes this will be "definitively proven" in the next decade.

Noting that malignant brain tumours represent "a life-ending diagnosis", he adds: "We are currently experiencing a reactively unchecked and dangerous situation." He fears that "unless the industry and governments take immediate and decisive steps", the incidence of malignant brain tumours and associated death rate will be observed to rise globally within a decade from now, by which time it may be far too late to intervene medically.

"It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking," says Professor Khurana, who told the IoS his assessment is partly based on the fact that three billion people now use the phones worldwide, three times as many as smoke. Smoking kills some five million worldwide each year, and exposure to asbestos is responsible for as many deaths in Britain as road accidents.

Late last week, the Mobile Operators Association dismissed Khurana's study as "a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual". It believes he "does not present a balanced analysis" of the published science, and "reaches opposite conclusions to the WHO and more than 30 other independent expert scientific reviews".

Link to this article: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news...

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Phone-reliant Britons in the grip of 'nomo-phobia'
By Katharine Barney
Monday, 31 March 2008

Being out of mobile-phone contact is as stressful as moving house or breaking up with a partner for nearly one in five phone users, according to a survey which suggests many Britons are in the grip of "nomo-phobia".

Anxiety over running out of battery or credit, losing one's handset and not having network coverage affects 53 per cent of the UK's 45 million mobile-phone users, according to the study by YouGov.

Stewart Fox-Mills, the head of telephony at the Post Office, which commissioned the survey, said "nomo-phobia" was a real phenomenon for many people. "We're all familiar with the stressful situations of everyday life such as moving house, break-ups and organising a family Christmas, but it seems being out of mobile contact may be the 21st century's contribution to our already manic lives," he said. "Being phoneless and panicked is a symptom of our 24/7 culture."

Men were more likely than women to be affected by losing mobile phone contact, with 48 per cent of women and 58 per cent of men admitting to feelings of anxiety. More than 20 per cent of the 2,163 people questioned said they never switched off their mobiles, and one in 10 said their job required them to be contactable at all times.

Some 55 per cent cited keeping in touch with friends or family as the main reason for being wedded to their handsets and 9 per cent said having their phone switched off made them anxious.

The Post Office has now produced a guide to avoiding "nomo-phobia" which recommends leaving loved ones an alternative contact number and making a back-up list of all contacts in case the phone is lost or stolen.

The ban on mobile-phone use on planes has posed a problem for those who feel the need to be contactable. But last month, Ofcom, the communications regulator, confirmed British airline passengers could, by next year, use mobiles on aircraft flying above 3,000m. The calls are likely to cost between £1 and £2 a minute.

Link to this article: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/phonereliant-britons-in-t...

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Warning: Using a mobile phone while pregnant can seriously damage your baby

Study of 13,000 children exposes link between use of handsets and later behavioural problems
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 18 May 2008
AP

[Scientists found that mothers who did use the handsets were 54 per cent more likely to have children with behavioural problems and that the likelihood increased with the amount of potential exposure to the radiation]

Women who use mobile phones when pregnant are more likely to give birth to children with behavioural problems, according to authoritative research.

A giant study, which surveyed more than 13,000 children, found that using the handsets just two or three times a day was enough to raise the risk of their babies developing hyperactivity and difficulties with conduct, emotions and relationships by the time they reached school age. And it adds that the likelihood is even greater if the children themselves used the phones before the age of seven.

The results of the study, the first of its kind, have taken the top scientists who conducted it by surprise. But they follow warnings against both pregnant women and children using mobiles by the official Russian radiation watchdog body, which believes that the peril they pose "is not much lower than the risk to children's health from tobacco or alcohol".

The research – at the universities of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Aarhus, Denmark – is to be published in the July issue of the journal Epidemiology and will carry particular weight because one of its authors has been sceptical that mobile phones pose a risk to health.

UCLA's Professor Leeka Kheifets – who serves on a key committee of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, the body that sets the guidelines for exposure to mobile phones – wrote three and a half years ago that the results of studies on people who used them "to date give no consistent evidence of a causal relationship between exposure to radiofrequency fields and any adverse health effect".

The scientists questioned the mothers of 13,159 children born in Denmark in the late 1990s about their use of the phones in pregnancy, and their children's use of them and behaviour up to the age of seven. As they gave birth before mobiles became universal, about half of the mothers had used them infrequently or not at all, enabling comparisons to be made.

They found that mothers who did use the handsets were 54 per cent more likely to have children with behavioural problems and that the likelihood increased with the amount of potential exposure to the radiation. And when the children also later used the phones they were, overall, 80 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties with behaviour. They were 25 per cent more at risk from emotional problems, 34 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties relating to their peers, 35 per cent more likely to be hyperactive, and 49 per cent more prone to problems with conduct.

The scientists say that the results were "unexpected", and that they knew of no biological mechanisms that could cause them. But when they tried to explain them by accounting for other possible causes – such as smoking during pregnancy, family psychiatric history or socio-economic status – they found that, far from disappearing, the association with mobile phone use got even stronger.

They add that there might be other possible explanations that they did not examine – such as that mothers who used the phones frequently might pay less attention to their children – and stress that the results "should be interpreted with caution" and checked by further studies. But they conclude that "if they are real they would have major public health implications".

Professor Sam Milham, of the blue-chip Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and the University of Washington School of Public Health – one of the pioneers of research in the field – said last week that he had no doubt that the results were real. He pointed out that recent Canadian research on pregnant rats exposed to similar radiation had found structural changes in their offspring's brains.

The Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection says that use of the phones by both pregnant women and children should be "limited". It concludes that children who talk on the handsets are likely to suffer from "disruption of memory, decline of attention, diminishing learning and cognitive abilities, increased irritability" in the short term, and that longer-term hazards include "depressive syndrome" and "degeneration of the nervous structures of the brain".

Link to this article: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news...

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Health risk of long-term mobile phone use to be studied by scientists
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 8 June 2008

Scientists have started work on a massive official study to discover whether the long-term use of mobile phones causes brain cancer, and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

The study – whose launch vindicates an Independent on Sunday campaign to draw attention to potential risks of using handsets for over a decade – will initially involve 200,000 people in Britain, Denmark and Sweden, and hopes to increase its range to other European countries. The British part of it alone will cost £3.1m, provided jointly by the Government and by the mobile-phone industry.

The research – which is being led in Britain by a team from Imperial College, London, under the auspices of the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research (MTHR) Programme – will follow 90,000 mobile-phone users in this country over the years, to see what happens to them. It is important because cancers take at least 10 years – and normally much longer – to develop, but the phones have spread so rapidly and recently that relatively few people have been using them for that long. Official assurances that the phones do not cause the disease have been of little value as they are based on research that, at best, includes few people who have been exposed to radiation from the phones long enough.

Last October, this newspaper reported that the most comprehensive study to date – a review of all the research on people exposed for more than a decade – had found that they were twice as likely to get brain cancer on the side of the head where they held the handset.

Last night, Mike Bell, chairman of the Radiation Research Trust, hailed the launch of the new study as a "breakthrough" and said it had partly come about because of the way the IoS had put the issue "into the public domain".

Link to this article: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news...

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Mobile phone radiation wrecks your sleep

Phone makers own scientists discover that bedtime use can lead to headaches, confusion and depression

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 20 January 2008

Radiation from mobile phones delays and reduces sleep, and causes headaches and confusion, according to a new study.

The research, sponsored by the mobile phone companies themselves, shows that using the handsets before bed causes people to take longer to reach the deeper stages of sleep and to spend less time in them, interfering with the body's ability to repair damage suffered during the day.

The findings are especially alarming for children and teenagers, most of whom – surveys suggest – use their phones late at night and who especially need sleep. Their failure to get enough can lead to mood and personality changes, ADHD-like symptoms, depression, lack of concentration and poor academic performance.

The study – carried out by scientists from the blue-chip Karolinska Institute and Uppsala University in Sweden and from Wayne State University in Michigan, USA – is thought to be the most comprehensive of its kind.

Published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symposium and funded by the Mobile Manufacturers Forum, representing the main handset companies, it has caused serious concern among top sleep experts, one of whom said that there was now "more than sufficient evidence" to show that the radiation "affects deep sleep".

The scientists studied 35 men and 36 women aged between 18 and 45. Some were exposed to radiation that exactly mimicked what is received when using mobile phones; others were placed in precisely the same conditions, but given only "sham" exposure, receiving no radiation at all.

The people who had received the radiation took longer to enter the first of the deeper stages of sleep, and spent less time in the deepest one. The scientists concluded: "The study indicates that during laboratory exposure to 884 MHz wireless signals components of sleep believed to be important for recovery from daily wear and tear are adversely affected."

The embarrassed Mobile Manufacturers Forum played down the results, insisting – at apparent variance with this published conclusion – that its "results were inconclusive" and that "the researchers did not claim that exposure caused sleep disturbance".

But Professor Bengt Arnetz, who led the study, says: "We did find an effect from mobile phones from exposure scenarios that were realistic. This suggests that they have measurable effects on the brain."

He believes that the radiation may activate the brain's stress system, "making people more alert and more focused, and decreasing their ability to wind down and fall asleep".

About half of the people studied believed themselves to be "electrosensitive", reporting symptoms such as headaches and impaired cognitive function from mobile phone use. But they proved to be unable to tell if they had been exposed to the radiation in the test.

This strengthens the conclusion of the study, as it disposes of any suggestion that knowledge of exposure influenced sleeping patterns. Even more significantly, it throws into doubt the relevance of studies the industry relies on to maintain that the radiation has no measurable effects.

A series of them – most notably a recent highly publicised study at Essex University – have similarly found that people claiming to be electrosensitive could not distinguish when the radiation was turned on in laboratory conditions, suggesting that they were not affected.

Critics have attacked the studies' methodology, but the new findings deal them a serious blow. For they show that the radiation did have an effect, even though people could not tell when they were exposed.

It also complements other recent research. A massive study, following 1,656 Belgian teenagers for a year, found most of them used their phones after going to bed. It concluded that those who did this once a week were more than three times – and those who used them more often more than five times – as likely to be "very tired".

Dr Chris Idzikowski, the director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, says: "There is now more than sufficient evidence, from a large number of reputable investigators who are finding that mobile phone exposure an hour before sleep adversely affects deep sleep."

Dr William Kohler of the Florida Sleep Institute added: "Anything that disrupts the integrity of your sleep will potentially have adverse consequences in functioning during the day, such as grouchiness, difficulty concentrating, and in children hyperactivity and behaviour problems."

David Schick, the chief executive of Exradia, which manufactures protective devices against the radiation, called on ministers to conduct "a formal public inquiry" into the effects of mobile phones.

To have your say on this or any other issue visit www.independent.co.uk/IoSblogs

Link to this article: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news...