- Mobile phones and the new wireless technology could cause
a "whole generation" of today's teenagers to go senile in the
prime of their lives, new research suggests
-
- The study - which warns specifically against "the
intense use of mobile phones by youngsters" - comes as research on
their health effects is being scaled down, due to industry pressure. It
is likely to galvanise concern about the almost universal exposure to microwaves
in Western countries, by revealing a new way in which they may seriously
damage health.
-
- Professor Leif Salford, who headed the research at Sweden's
prestigious Lund University, says "the voluntary exposure of the brain
to microwaves from hand-held mobile phones" is "the largest human
biological experiment ever". And he is concerned that, as new wireless
technology spreads, people may "drown in a sea of microwaves".
-
- The study - financed by the Swedish Council for Work
Life Research, and published by the US government's National Institute
of Environmental Health Sciences - breaks new ground by looking at how
low levels of microwaves cause proteins to leak across the blood-brain
barrier.
-
- Previous concerns about mobile phones have concentrated
on the possibility that the devices may heat the brain, or cause cancer.
But the heating is thought to be too minor to have an effect and hundreds
of cancer studies have been inconclusive.
-
- As a result, the US mobile phone industry has succeeded
in cutting research into the health effects, and the World Health Organisation
is unlikely to continue its studies.
-
- Mays Swicord, a scientific adviser to Motorola told New
Scientist magazine that governments and industry should "stop wasting
money" by looking for health damage.
-
- But Professor Salford and his team have spent 15 years
investigating a different threat. Their previous studies proved radiation
could open the blood-brain barrier, allowing a protein called albumin to
pass into the brain. Their latest work goes a step further, by showing
the process is linked to serious brain damage. Professor Salford said the
long-term effects were not proven, and that it was possible the neurons
would repair themselves in time. But, he said, neurons that would normally
not become "senile" until people reached their 60s may now do
so when they were in their 30s.
-
- He says he deliberately refrained from publicising his
work to avoid alarm, and acknowledges that mobile phones can save lives.
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=443248
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