Table of Contents
Advertisement
decreases rapidly with distance from the source. The safety
of so-called "cordless phones," which have a base unit con-
nected to the telephone wiring in a house and which oper-
ate at far lower power levels and frequencies, has not been
questioned.
How much evidence is there that hand-held mobile
phones might be harmful?
Briefly, there is not enough evidence to know for sure, either
way; however, research efforts are on-going. The existing
scientific evidence is conflicting and many of the studies
that have been done to date have suffered from flaws in
their research methods. Animal experiments investigating
the effects of RF exposures characteristic of mobile phones
have yielded conflicting results. A few animal studies, how-
ever, have suggested that low levels of RF could accelerate
the development of cancer in laboratory animals. In one
study, mice genetically altered to be predisposed to devel-
oping one type of cancer developed more than
twice as many such cancers when they were exposed to RF
energy compared to controls. There is much uncertainty
among scientists about whether results obtained from ani-
mal studies apply to the use of mobile phones. First, it is
uncertain how to apply the results obtained in rats and mice
to humans. Second, many of the studies that showed
increased tumor development used animals that had
already been treated with cancer-causing chemicals, and
other studies exposed the animals to the RF virtually
continuously--up to 22 hours per day.
For the past five years in the United States, the mobile
phone industry has supported research into the safety of
mobile phones. This research has resulted in two findings in
particular that merit additional study:
1.
In a hospital-based, case-control study, researchers looked for
an association between mobile phone use and either glioma (a
type of brain cancer) or acoustic neuroma (a benign tumor of
the nerve sheath). No statistically significant association was
found between mobile phone use and acoustic neuroma. There
was also no association between mobile phone use and glio-
mas when all types of types of gliomas were considered
together. It should be noted that the average length of mobile
phone exposure in this study was less than three years.
-51-
Advertisement
Table of Contents
