LINKED TO MOBILE TELEPHONES
A German study indicates the electromagnetic fields emitted by mobile telephones cause an increase in blood pressure. Dr. Stephan Braune of the University Neurology Clinic in Freiburg, Germany, strapped a mobile phone to the heads of 10 volunteers between the ages of 26 and 36. The phones were switched on by remote control at various intervals such that the volunteers were not aware when they were being exposed to the electromagnetic fields.
Researchers measured blood pressures while the volunteers were lying down and standing up. The researchers recorded increases of 5 mm to 10 mm Hg in blood pressure while volunteers were resting and exposed to the switched-on mobile phone. The increase in blood pressure probably resulted from constriction of the arteries caused by the radio-frequency EMF, said the researchers.
Swedish Survey Links Cell Phone Use To Ills
In two unrelated developments that could reignite the debate over whether wireless technology poses health risks, a new Swedish survey has found possible links between mobile phones and illness symptoms, while a female executive with a brain tumor has retained the largest personal-injury law firm in the United Kingdom in what could become the first pocket phone-cancer lawsuit against manufacturers there.
The Swedish report and the planned lawsuit come at a time when House telecom subcommittee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.) and the U.S. cellular industry are fighting efforts by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) to fund government-sponsored wireless phone-cancer research with a portion of revenue that an E911-federal land antenna-siting bill is supposed to generate.
The Food and Drug Administration, which oversees phone safety, says more biological research is needed on pocket phones. At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency says the current radio-frequency radiation standard for pocket phones provides adequate protection for the nation's 60 million subscribers. Critics, however, say RF guidelines fail to account for any effects from long-term exposure to the low-power communications.
Do Cellular Phones Cause Brain Cancer?
There has been anecdotal evidence for several years associating use of cellular phones, and other sources of electromagnetic radiation in the microwave region of the spectrum, with brain cancers and other cancers. From police officers who used radar guns to heavy users of cellular phones who have contracted cancer, there has been mounting evidence that exposure to this kind of electromagnetic radiation may not be as safe as advertised.
Cell phones/cancer connection, by Stewart Fist, The Australian newspaper, Tues 29 April 1997
A team of scientists funded by Telstra to investigate claimed links between cellular phones and cancer has turned up probably the most significant finding of an adverse health effects yet.
When presented to 'Science' magazine for publication the study was rejected on the grounds that publication "would cause a panic". Three other prominent magazines including 'Nature' also later rejected the report, suggesting that they would not handle such important conclusions without the research being further confirmed.
The study looked at 200 mice, half exposed and half not, to pulsed digital phone radiation. The work was conducted at the Royal Adelaide Hospital by Dr Michael Repacholi, Professor Tony Basten, Dr Alan Harris and statistician Val Gebski, and it revealed a highly-significant doubling of cancer rates in the exposed group.
The mice were subject to GSM-type pulsed microwaves at a power-density roughly equal to a cell-phone transmitting for two half-hour periods each day; this was pulsed transmission as from a handset, not the steady transmission of a cell-phone tower.
A significant increase in B-cell lymphomas was evident early in the experiment, but the incidence continued to rise over the 18 months. The implications of the B-cell (rather than the normal T-cell) lymphomas here, is that B-cell effects are implicated in roughly 85 percent of all cancers.
The experiment was conducted as a blind trial, using absolutely identical equipment and conditions for two groups of 100 mice. The only difference between handling the two groups was that the power to one antenna was never switched on. Over the 18 months, the exposed mice had 2.4-times the tumour rate of the unexposed - but this was later corrected downwards to a more confident 2-times claim to remove other possible influences.
According to Dr Alan Harris from the Walter and Eliza Institute in Melbourne: "This is important because at present, there was no convincing evidence that radio fields (in contrast to X- and Gamma-rays, ultraviolet and atomic radiation) can directly cause the changes in genes responsible for cancer development."
This report follows Dr Henry Lai and Dr Singh at Washington State University who reported enormous increases in double-strand DNA breaks in rat-brain tissue following microwave exposures of only two hours.
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