by Charles Arthur
Technology Editor, The Independent - London, 9-5-01
People who used mobile phones
for two hours a day in the 1980s and early 1990s have a "significantly
raised" risk of developing a brain tumor, a Swedish scientist
has found.
The study by Lennart Hardell,
a cancer specialist at Orebro University in Sweden, is a landmark piece
of research in the debate over whether the microwave radiation put
out by mobile phone handsets can cause cancer. It is due to be published
later this year. His research compared 1,600 people who survived brain
tumors with 1,600 healthy people. He found that those who had used
mobile phones for more than five years were 26 percent more likely,
and those who used them for more than a decade were 77 percent more
likely, to develop a brain tumor than those who did not. The tumors
were 2.5 times more likely to be on the same side of the head as the
phone was usually held.
The findings will fuel the
debate over the use of mobile phones by children which grew in intensity
when speakers at the British Association science conference in Glasgow
condemned companies for encouraging young people to use the phones.
Professor Hardell said it was
not possible to extend his results directly to modern phones, which
emit about 10 times less power that the older analogue ones. But he
did advise adopting a
"precautionary" approach.
Dr. Michael Clark, of the National
Radiological Protection Board, which set limits on radiation exposure,
said: "A study like this has to be taken seriously... but analogue
phones were pretty much phased out around 1997. The new digital ones
emit significantly less power."
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