September 1, 2006
Steve Woodward, Newhouse News Service

Six years ago, about a year after he began using a cell phone, Nathan Parr's left temple began to ache.

The stabbing pains would come two to three times an hour, lasting five to 10 minutes at a time. For six years, the headaches continued, subsiding when he left his cell phone at home in Portland, Ore., during regular travels to India.

Reflecting on questions about cell phones from his massage therapist and his qigong practitioner, he began to draw a connection between his headaches and the fact that he often held his cell phone against his left ear.

Today, his headaches are disappearing.

"I started using my cell phone less," says the 34-year-old travel agent, who believes that cell phone radiation was one of several factors that created his headaches. "I use the speaker phone on my cell."

Despite Parr's experience, scientific studies worldwide so far suggest that complaints such as his have little to do with cell phones.

"There is no scientific evidence to date that proves that wireless phone usage and cell phone radiation can lead to cancer or a variety of other health effects, including headaches, dizziness or memory loss," the Federal Communications Commission tells consumers on its Web site, echoing the conclusions of other federal agencies, the World Health Organization and other nations.

On the other hand, there remains no conclusive proof that cell phones don't create harmful effects.

"Although most of the epidemiological and laboratory studies conducted on the issue have found no adverse health effects," the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in 2001, "the findings of some studies have raised questions about possible cancer and non-cancer effects that require further investigation."

One series of studies, for example, found that exposing blood cells to cellular-type radio waves changed their genetic material. Other studies have suggested that cell-phone radiation could accelerate or contribute to cancer in lab animals.

However, the studies that detect health hazards are, by and large, contradicted by vastly more numerous studies that can't reproduce those results or produce conflicting results.

The need to clear up the uncertainty has become pressing. An estimated 218 million Americans subscribe to a cell-phone service, nearly three out of every four men, women and children. Worldwide, wireless subscribers should top 2 billion next year, according to In-Stat/MDR, a high-tech market-research firm.

"Given the immense number of people who use mobile phones," the World Health Organization says, "even a small increase in the incidence of adverse effects on health could have major public health implications."

One of the most ambitious recent studies, the so-called Reflex Project sponsored by the British government, seeks to establish whether low-level radio waves can wreak havoc at the microscopic level of cells and molecules. If so, that would explain how cell phones could cause chronic diseases.

Although conventional wisdom says such waves are too weak to affect health, Reflex found evidence that cell-phone radiation was breaking up strands of DNA and causing genetic aberrations in cells.

The study's authors wrote that the evidence moved illness-causing cell phones "nearer into the range of the possible."

"Furthermore," they added, "there exists no justification anymore to claim that we are not aware of any pathophysiological mechanisms which could be the basis for the development of functional disturbances and any kind of chronic diseases in animal and man."

One of the most pressing health questions -- and one that has barely been addressed -- is the long-term effect of cell-phone use on children.

Motorola, America's leading cell-phone maker, with 32 percent of the market, cites the World Health Organization and other authorities in saying "there is no health-related reason to limit usage by children."

"If parents choose to provide their children with mobile phones," the company says in a statement on its Web site, "they can do so with comfort in the safety of those products."

The WHO, in fact, does acknowledge that international guidelines appear to protect children adequately.

"However," the organization adds, "given the uncertainty about effects in children, the use of measures that reduce their exposure, in addition to the adoption of international standards, seems appropriate."

Moreover, the creator of the guidelines, the International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, notes that "almost no data are available on the consequences of childhood exposure."

It's not surprising that few data on children exist. More than half of all U.S. cell-phone subscribers, including children, have used their phones for six years or less. That's too brief a time for many potential long-term health problems to have emerged. Moreover, most group studies have concentrated on adults -- or were conducted before most people had cell phones.

In the United Kingdom, the government also is calling for caution about children.

"For exposure to mobile phones," the U.K.'s National Radiological Protection Board reported in 2004, "there are conflicting reports as to whether there is a significant increase in the SAR (a measure of radiation) absorbed in the head, and particularly in the brain, for children compared to adults. This is an area where clarification is needed."

Health organizations have also identified the elderly and people on certain medications as potentially vulnerable to low-level radio waves.

Some adult human studies have shown changes in blood pressure, brain activity, reaction times and sleep patterns. The WHO says those physiological effects are small and apparently benign.

"Using a cell phone is not innocuous," E. Roy John, director of New York University Medical Center's Brain Research Laboratories, told HealthDay News in June. "It has an effect on your brain. Whether that's good or bad, we don't yet know, but it's definitely having an effect."

John was responding to a report in the Annals of Neurology that a cell phone's electromagnetic field can excite some cells in the brain's cortex next to the phone while inhibiting others. The study's Italian authors suggested that the findings might be good news for people with migraines, stroke or dementia, bad news for those with epilepsy.

The U.K.'s National Radiation Protection Board, in a review of work done by other nations and scientific groups between 2000 and 2004, noted that scientists were finding the kinds of biological effects that the Italian researchers would find this year.

"Overall," the board reported, "the reports acknowledge that exposure to low-level RF (radio-frequency) fields may cause a variety of subtle biological effects on cells, animals or humans, particularly on brain activity, but the possibility of exposure causing adverse health effects remains unproven."

Like everyone else, the board recommended further study.

LIMITING RADIATION

If using a mobile phone makes you nervous, you can take several steps to reduce your exposure to the radio-frequency radiation that such phones generate. These suggestions come from the National Cancer Institute and from "Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age" by Martin Schram and Dr. George Carlo, the cell-phone industry's former top health adviser.

-- Use a hands-free headset or earpiece so that the phone's antenna is away from your head. Note: Few studies have assessed the safety of increasingly popular wireless Bluetooth headsets, which use weak radio waves to communicate with phones.

-- In the car, use a cell phone with the antenna mounted on the outside of the vehicle. (However, avoid talking while driving, which is a proven danger.)

-- If you don't use a headset, extend the phone's antenna as far as possible. Most radiation is emitted from the midpoint of the antenna.

-- Avoid using the cell phone when signal strength is low. The phone is working harder -- that is, emitting more radiation -- trying to establish and maintain a connection.

-- Avoid letting children younger than 10 use cell phones regularly. For communication, consider giving them pagers instead.

-- Use cell phones for shorter conversations and for times when conventional phones aren't available.

-- If you have an internal pacemaker, keep cell phones at least eight inches away from the device.

Sept. 1, 2006

(Steve Woodward is a staff writer for The Oregonian of Portland, Ore. He can be contacted at stevewoodward@news.oregonian.com)

More Studies

Study Finds High Cancer Risk From Cell Phone Radiation - The use of mobile phones over a long period of time can raise the risk of brain tumors, according to a Swedish study released on Friday, contradicting the conclusions of other researchers.