Health claims on short term use of mobile phones unsubstantiated

According to a report which has considered six years of research by 28 different teams of scientists, the health claims made regarding mobile phones or the masts that broadcast their signals have not been substantiated.

But the researchers say this is only applies to short term use and long-term damage cannot be ruled out.

The £8.8m study is one of the biggest studies into their dangers and was conducted by the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research (MTHR) programme led by Professor Lawrie Challis.

The MTHR final report looked at research which examined the effects of mobile phones on health factors such as blood pressure, brain function and cancer.

Professor Challis says the fears cannot be entirely disregarded because cancer has a long latency period, and mobile phones had not been in use long enough to rule out risk.

A second study is planned at a cost of £6 million which will follow mobile-users over a long period to see if intensity of use has any link with the frequency of cancers.

Professor Challis says the results are reassuring and there was no evidence of immediate or short-term damage and no association between use and cancer.

It seems experiments on tissue produced no effects, and the committee responsible for the programme believes that there is no need for further work in this area.

The researchers tested people who complained that they were hypersensitive to electromagnetic fields and they found that they were able to tell whether the fields were turned on or off but say their symptoms must have some other cause.

Although the mobile phone industry had jointly funded the research with the Government, Professor Challis emphasises that the committee had been protected from any undue influence.

Top researchers were used whose work had been published in peer-reviewed journals and of the 28 projects that were funded, 23 were now complete and published papers.

Professor Challis says the possibility that cancer could appear in a few years time cannot be ruled out and as most cancers cannot be detected until ten years after the event which caused them, so the research must continue.

He says they cannot reassure people about the long-term use of mobile phones.

One sign which was a cause for concern was a "very slight hint" of increased incidences of brain tumours among longer-term users, which was at the borderline of statistical significance and needed further investigation.

The next phase of the MTHR programme will focus on children and the long-term effects of mobiles on health.

Professor Challis says it is known that children react differently to a number of other environmental agents such as lead, tobacco smoke, ultraviolet radiation and ionising radiation, and are often more severely affected by them than adults.

He says it is possible that children maybe more sensitive to mobile phone radiation.

Next year a study involving 200,000 people will take place in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Britain where mobile phone users will be identified and followed for a prolonged period; any symptoms they suffer will be recorded and compared with their use of mobile phones, using billing records.