Mobile phones ‘should not be used by under 12s’ says scientist launching 30-year study into health risks

Doubts about the long-term safety of mobile phones have been raised again today at the launch of a major investigation into potential health risks.

The Cohort Study on Mobile Communications (Cosmos) will monitor the health of at least 250,000 mobile phone users for 20 to 30 years.

At the launch, Lawrie Challis, a physicist and expert on the effects of radiation, said he already thought under-12s should not use mobile phones.

Professor Challis said that while parents would find it impossible to stop teenagers from using the devices there was a ‘good argument’ for saying that younger children should not be given them.

The professor, a member of the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme, which is funding the study, said: ‘I don’t see why with young children one shouldn’t be a little bit more firm as a parent and say there are reasons why they think it is not a good idea, unless there are specific safety reasons why it needs to be done.’

He also advises teenagers to use their phone to text, rather than talk, where possible and adults to use hands-free headsets.

Those taking part in the research will be aged from 18 to 69 and live in five European countries including the UK. The UK arm of the study is led by a team from Imperial College London.

More than 70 million mobile phones are in use in the UK alone, and an estimated six billion around the world.

Ever since the technology emerged in the 1980s and 1990s there were claims of health problems linked to mobile phones ranging from brain cancer to migraines and infertility.

Currently the jury is out on whether or not mobile phones are associated with any long term adverse health effects.

Experts hope it will provide a definitive answer to the question of whether mobile phones are linked to cancer, migraines, infertility and other health problems.

There appears to be little evidence of problems arising after short periods of usage.

A report from the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones (IEGMP) led by Sir William Stewart concluded in May 2000 that there was no clear evidence of harm to health from exposure to mobile phone signals.

However the Stewart Report said further research was needed to settle scientific uncertainties, and called for a precautionary approach.

It recommended discouraging excessive use of mobile phones by children, whose thin skulls could make them more susceptible to mobile phone radiation.

Since 2000 a number of other scientific reports from around the world have come to similar conclusions.

Work on a multi-national investigation called Interphone looking at the incidence of head and neck tumours is still ongoing.

Results from individual participating countries have suggested an association between more than 10 years of mobile phone usage and some tumours. But it is still not clear to what extent this might be due to ‘selection bias’ – cancer patients over-reporting mobile phone use on the side of the head where their tumour arose.

Validation studies have indicated that selection bias may indeed have skewed the findings.

Posted by Daily Mail Reporter on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 6:00 pm.

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