A group of international scientists have released new research confirming risks of cell phone exposure including DNA damage, impaired brain function, and lowered sperm count.
A meeting Monday by Environmental Health Trust, with the Turkish cancer society, and Gazi University, revealed the new research that the scientists say shows just four hours of cell phone exposure can damage DNA, brain and sperm function...
"We are deeply concerned about what this could mean for public health," said Prof. Nesrin Seyhan , WHO and NATO advisor who is head and founder of Biophysics Department and Bioelectromagnetics Laboratory at Gazi University in Ankara.
"This work provides a warning signal to all of us. The evidence justifies precautionary measures to reduce the risks for everyone of us," says Prof. Wilhelm Mosgoeller from the Medical University of Vienna who has led European research teams, who found that RF-EMF induce DNA breaks.
The studies found that the brain is impacted by cell phone radiation:
Dr. Seyhan shared work performed at Gazi University demonstrating that the increasing use of cell phones-and the increasing number of associated base stations-are becoming a widespread source of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation.
It suggested that some biological effects are likely to occur even with low-level electromagnetic fields. The team concluded that 900 and 1,800 MHz radiation levels are related to an increase in the permeability of the blood-brain barrier in young adult male rats. The rat's brains can be used to correspond to the brains of human teenagers.
In addition, research from the University of Athens shared their studies demonstrating that rats exposed to cell phone radiation were unable to remember the location of places previously familiar to them. This finding is of potentially critical importance for people, who heavily rely on spatial memory for recording information about their environment and spatial orientation.
In February, JAMA published research which found that it takes less than an hour for RF cell phone signals to alter brain activity.
Recent research from Australia shows that cell phones decrease men's fertility:
The study, published in the online version of the journal Andrologia, followed 2,110 men attending an infertility clinic in Austria between 1993 and 2007. The researchers found a "significant difference" between the sperm counts of men who used cellphones over the study period and men who did not. "The initial sperm count decreased. Even the ability of the sperm to move decreased over time," Shamloul says.
Electromagnetic waves can affect cells all over the body, he explains, including reproductive cells, which are very sensitive to radiation.
In 2008, a large study performed in Denmark was published showing that cell phone use by pregnant women causes behavioral problems in children.
The scientists questioned the mothers of 13,159 children born in Denmark in the late 1990s about their use of the phones in pregnancy, and their children's use of them and behaviour up to the age of seven. As they gave birth before mobiles became universal, about half of the mothers had used them infrequently or not at all, enabling comparisons to be made.
They found that mothers who did use the handsets were 54 per cent more likely to have children with behavioural problems and that the likelihood increased with the amount of potential exposure to the radiation. And when the children also later used the phones they were, overall, 80 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties with behaviour. They were 25 per cent more at risk from emotional problems, 34 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties relating to their peers, 35 per cent more likely to be hyperactive, and 49 per cent more prone to problems with conduct.
Interestingly, a study which attempted to quash reports of a link between cell phone use and brain cancer actually found that the risk of developing a brain tumor was doubled after 10 years:
[I]t is worth taking a more detailed look at the results of Interphone, a multinational study designed to try to answer this question.
The headline from this study was there was little or no evidence to show an association between cell phones and cancer. Though, if you went to the appendix of the study, which interestingly was available only online, you found something unsettling. The data showed people who used a cell phone 10 years or more doubled the risk of developing a glioma, a type of brain tumor.