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- LEAVING a mobile phone clipped
to your waist leads to a hotspot of radiation being pumped into the liver
and kidneys.
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- Yet thousands of people are now attaching mobiles to
their belts as they switch to hands-free kits, thinking they are safer.
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- The changeover came after the Sunday Mirror warned that
the brain can be affected by harmful rays if users spend too long with
their mobiles clamped to their ear.
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- Yet a new series of tests we exclusively commissioned,
have revealed that using a phone while it is clipped to your belt could
be even MORE dangerous.
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- Tests on a dummy torso packed with chemicals designed
to mimic the body showed the area around the liver and kidneys being flooded
with energy.
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- The bright red area is the spot nearest the mobile phone's
antenna and earpiece.
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- Alasdair Philips, of the consumer group Powerwatch, said:
"We could be looking at a health time bomb waiting to explode.
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- "Using a hands-free kit and making a call with a
mobile phone clipped to your belt means the phone will generally be working
at a higher power level.
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- "That's because it is generally harder to transmit
from waist-height than head-height. But there's a lot of body tissue in
that area which has good conductivity and absorbs radiation more quickly
than the head.
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- "The risk would be to the organs which are situated
in that part of the body - the liver and the kidneys.
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- He added: "When a call comes in, people with hands-free
kits should unhook their phone and hold it about a metre away from their
body.
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- "And even if the phone is only on standby, if it
is clipped on to your belt, you should make sure it's not in the same place."
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- John Simpson, of Microshield Industries, which conducted
the tests, added: "People who use hands-free kits tend to spend more
time on the phone because they think they are safer. But not only does
the body absorb more radiation than the head, the phone has to work harder
to pick up a signal if it is down by the waist, so it kicks out more radiation."
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- A spokesman for the Federation Of The Electronics Industry,
which represents mobile phone makers, said any safety worries were always
taken seriously.
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- But he added: "There is no substantive evidence
against mobile phones."
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- A spokesman for mobile phone company Orange agreed. "There's
no substantiated evidence which makes a link between using mobile hand
sets and long-term health risks," he said.
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