Mobiles 'Never Ruled Safe'
Evening Standard
Journalist: Mark Prigg,
January 14, 2004
Mobile phones can never be declared as
officially safe, government advisers warned today.
They claim that the difficulty in measuring handset radiation
means people are effectively playing Russian roulette with their
health every time they use a mobile.
The comments, which come on the day that government experts
unveil a major report into mobile-phone health risks, are set to
re-ignite the debate on their safety.
The dispute
centres around the levels of radiation emitted into the brain by
handsets and masts. Some campaigners claim it can cause brain
tumours or other forms of cancer. Simon Mann, of the National Radiological Protection Board, which
produced the report, admitted it was impossible to analyse the
radiation levels emitted by phones and masts. "The basic problem is
that phone users move around all the time," he said.
"We can measure what radiation they are exposed to if they stand
in one place. But once they start moving around it becomes
impossible."
Professor Les Barclay, a telecoms consultant who advised the
Government on its 2000 report into phone safety, backed Mr Mann's
views.
Professor Barclay said: "The way radiation works means that the
density of flesh and bone in your head and your distance from a
handset or mast can all make a difference to the amount of radiation
being absorbed by the brain.
"There is no conclusive evidence, nor will there ever be. This is
one of those areas that can never be proved 100 per cent one way or
another. Radiation can affect different people very differently."
Professor Barclay added that, while there would never be any
guarantees, he believed phones were safe most of the time for most
people.
Today's report comes after a link was drawn between mobile-phone
use and the destruction of brain cells.
Scientists in Sweden claimed that prolonged exposure to radiation
from handsets destroyed cells in the areas of the brain important
for memory, movement and learning.
The research, carried out on rats, also suggested mobile-phone
use could increase the chances of premature ageing among young
mobile-phone users and lead to the early onset of diseases such as
Alzheimer's.
This confirmed research conducted on human tissue in 2002 that
suggested mobile-phone use eroded the safety barrier that protects
the human brain from harmful substances in the blood.
The greater the exposure to radiation, the Finnish researchers
found, the more permeable the brain's safety barrier became -
increasing the chances of lasting brain damage.