Even if we're uncertain about their effects, we know enough to take precautions with mobile phones

Mobile phones and health: what do we know?

Yanar Alkayat

21st July, 2009

In a matter of months, an Irish mobile network will launch 'Firefly' - the mobile phone for kids. With even official Government advice against such a move, Yanar Alkayat takes a timely look at what we know for certain about mobile phones and health

A decade of investigation has consistently shown that using a mobile for one hour a day over ten years could increase your chance of getting a brain cancer by at least 100 per cent

'I am seeing more patients than I would expect in their twenties and thirties with diagnosis of brain cancer,' says Australian neurosurgeon Dr. Vini Khurana, who is concerned that a relatively rare but life-threatening disease is on the rise.

The disease causes seizures, blindness and cripples coordination, and involves a build-up of abnormal cells in the brain. It can take between 10 and 20 years to develop and diagnose. While the risk factors are yet to be confirmed, an increasing body of evidence is linking mobile phone usage with certain brain tumours. 

Khurana hit the headlines earlier this year with the publication of a study that concluded mobile phones could be just as harmful, if not more so, than asbestos or smoking. He reviewed over 100 papers from brain specialist Dr. Lennart Hardell, a leading oncologist and researcher from Sweden’s Orebro University Hospital, and a multinational study into mobile phones and brain tumours, known as the Interphone project.

Hardell is renowned in the field of brain cancer research, and...

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