Japanese Mobile Phone Firms To
Study Health Risks
Japan's four mobile phone
companies, responding to growing concerns about cell phone use on health,
said on Thursday they had agreed to team up to study the possible biological
effects of exposure to radio waves.
Explosive growth in global mobile phone use has
increased the public debate over possible health risks linked to the
devices.
Last year an official at a World Health
Organisation said a link between mobile phone use and cancer could not be
dismissed without further research.
The firms -- market leader NTT DoCoMo Inc,
J-Phone Corp, KDDI Corp, Tu-ka Cellular Tokyo Inc -- said that as a first
step they would collaborate on a study to examine the effects of radio waves
both at the cell and genetic levels.
The research, already being carried out by DoCoMo,
is expected to take about four years to produce any conclusive results, a
DoCoMo spokesman said.
He said actual experiments had been commissioned to
Mitsubishi Chemical Safety Institute Ltd, a unit of Mitsubishi Chemical
Corp, to ensure objectivity.
KDDI is Japan's second-largest mobile phone
carrier, and third-ranked J-Phone is operated by Japan Telecom Holdings Co
Ltd and its British parent Vodafone Group Plc.
Tu-ka Cellular Tokyo, the
smallest of the four, is a subsidiary of KDDI.