Using Mobile for a short period not harmful, says expert

Sep 14: UK based Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research (MTHR) programme conducted a research on the possible health risk of using a mobile phone. It was set up in 2001 and jointly funded by government and mobile industry.

This study was led by Professor Lawrie Challis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at The University of Nottingham, the researchers found that the volunteers showed no evidence of impaired brain functioning due to exposure to mobile signals.

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Professor Challis, Chairman of MTHR, said that the results were "encouraging".

"This is a very substantial report from a large research programme. The work reported today has all been published in respected peer-reviewed scientific or medical journals," he said.

"The results are so far reassuring but there is still a need for more research, especially to check that no effects emerge from longer-term phone use from adults and from use by children," he added.

Professor Challis did not rule out the possibility of mobile phones causing cancer in the long-term. "We cannot rule out the possibility at this stage that cancer could appear in a few years' time”, he added.

The report was called as being biased as it was funded by the mobile industry. But the interim report released by them also described the organizations structure to prevent any interference.

The report clearly tells that there is no health risk found in the people using mobile for a period of ten years. But there is a risk when mobile is used while driving.

The limitation of this research was that the participants used mobile only for ten years or less, hence the studies couldn’t be done on the effect of longer use of mobile. Also there is no enough evidence to support that electromagnetic waves of these wavelengths in mobiles can influence living tissue or not .

Researchers concluded: "None of the research supported by the Programme and published so far demonstrates that biological or adverse health effects are produced by radio frequency exposure from mobile phones."

"There is no way we can do that, both because the epidemiological evidence we have is not strong enough to rule it out and because most cancers cannot be detected until 10 years after whatever caused them.

With these new findings, it may give relief to those who leave in fear of any health risk of using mobile phone. But the research is still not final and a long way to go, the possibility of children getting harm in their development as there brain cells still continue to grow at this age cannot be ruled.

Meanwhile, one can take the step by not waiting another report, but keeping the call short, buying mobile of low SAR (specific absorption rate), and this distraction while driving.