£7m study to reveal mobile phone risks

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The Department of Health yesterday announced a £7m research programme on mobile phones and a health problem that no one has yet been able to identify. It is also to distribute more than 1m leaflets - on both the handsets and the base stations that feed them - with each new mobile handset, or through doctor's surgeries, libraries, post offices and on the internet.
"There is uncertainty. We don't know whether a risk might be discovered," said Liam Donaldson, the government's chief medical officer.

The research programme follows a report by a government-appointed independent committee this year that it could find no evidence of a health risk in the use of mobile phones which conformed to international guidelines. But nor could it confirm that they were absolutely safe.
A taskforce, funded jointly by government and industry, will look more closely at evidence of subtle but apparently harmless biological effects linked with low level microwave radiation.
The leaflets will advise buyers to look at the SAR or "specific absorption rate" values of each make of phone, because these are a measure of exposure to radio waves.

And they will advise parents to discourage the use of mobile phones by children under 16, because they have smaller heads, thinner skulls and still-developing brains and could therefore be more at risk. Any calls by children should be for essential purposes only - and kept short.
They will also point out that drivers are at extra risk from road accidents if they use mobile phones while driving, and that the instruments can also be dangerous because they interfere with vital equipment in aircraft and hospitals.

There are around 30m mobile phones in Britain - and the number is rising - and there has been growing concern about possible health risks. There has also been alarm about transmitter masts. The leaflets will point out that exposure to radio waves from masts is thousands of times lower than the maximum levels stipulated by guidelines.

Behind the government's concern is the lesson of BSE, the so-called mad cow disease. There is no evidence that the phones can cause harm - but until 1996, there was no evidence that BSE could reach the human population.

Mobile phone research has been bedevilled by inconclusive experiments and conflicting results. There have been claims that hands-free sets could lead to lower radiation exposure, and counter-claims that they could lead to higher exposure. And although manufacturers of radiation "protection systems" have talked of hazards, most scientists are not convinced by the evidence.

"We find ourselves in a position where we don't have a clear answer on whether particular headsets reduce exposure and we probably don't have good enough science so far to be able to say one way or the other definitely, so further research is being conducted," Prof Donaldson said. "We can't tell the public something that isn't true and the position is that we just don't know."

The taskforce that oversees future research will be led by Sir William Stewart, a former government chief scientific adviser, who chaired the independent inquiry which left the safety question open.

The Federation of the Electronics Industry, which represents the phone network operators, said it hoped the public would not be puzzled by the advice on the use of phones by youngsters. There were clear security benefits in being able to stay in touch with children by mobile phone.

£7m study to reveal mobile phone risks | UK news | The Guardian