Mobiles 'make you senile'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor.
14 September 2003
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.
14 September 2003 12:04
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Joel M. Eichen, .
Philadelphia PA
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