Are mobiles and Wi-Fi a health hazard?

01 July 2013, Monday / RABIA SPIKER, LONDON

PHOTOS REUTERS

The things a smartphone can do today are more fantastical than the wildest imaginings of the sci-fi author of yesteryear could have come up with. They’ve become an oracle we keep in our pockets and handbags that we consult for answers to just about any question we may have, whether it be the time, the weather forecast, our GPS location or any other question the World Wide Web quite possibly holds the answer to.

These little devices also allow us to listen to music, play games and watch videos and they keep us connected with the world, through emails, text messages and social media. And, of course, we can use them to make and receive phone calls. In fact, smartphones and tablets have become so integral to modern life that anyone who eschews this modern technology is not only seen as a Luddite but also as awkwardly making life difficult for those around them by not being easily contactable -- not being available to reply to phone calls, messages and emails at a moment’s notice almost qualifies as antisocial behaviour these days. People who reject this technology on the grounds that it might not be safe are seen to be slightly off their rocker. It is safe, right? If it wasn’t, why would everyone be using it? Any concerns about safety are brushed aside just at the thought of getting rid of our smartphones and tablets, which are becoming our almost constant companions and the portals through which we are increasingly communicating with the world. Besides, according to the National Health Service (NHS) there is little cause for concern. On the mobile phone safety page of the NHS website, it says: “You are four times more likely to have an accident when using a mobile phone while driving. For now, this is considered the biggest risk to your health from using a mobile phone.” The site says that most current research indicates that it is unlikely mobile phones or base stations increase the risk of any type of cancer, but concedes that this evidence is based on the use of mobile phones over a 15-year period and that longer-term effects are still unknown. Despite these findings, the NHS gives recommendations to help lower any potential long-term risks from using mobile phones. These include only making short calls, not using your mobile more than necessary, keeping your mobile phone away from your body when it is in standby mode and only using your phone when the reception is strong as weak reception means the phone will need to use more energy to communicate with the base station. At the moment, we are willing guinea pigs in the experiment to find out whether this technology is safe in the long run. The question is, as convenient and integral to our lives as these technologies may have become, should we be thinking a little longer and harder about whether or not we want to take part in the experiment? In April of last year, a comprehensive review of research was published by the Health Protection Agency’s (HPA) independent Advisory Group on Non-ionising Radiation (AGNIR). The report, titled “Health Effects from Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields”, concluded that “although a substantial amount of research has been conducted in this area, there is no convincing evidence that RF field exposure below guideline levels causes health effects in adults or children”. Since then, in March of this year, a large number of organisations and individuals, including the EM Radiation Research Trust and Safe Schools Information Technology Alliance (SSITA), have lodged complaints with the HPA over its failure to provide appropriate precautionary advice to the public. Commenting on the above conclusion of the AGNIR report, they wrote, “We strongly disagree with this AGNIR statement. A large body of published scientific data has found that pulsed radiofrequency microwaves below the guideline levels can cause biological and adverse health effects, although many of these papers were omitted from the AGNIR 2012 report.” Weekly Zaman spoke to Professor Patrick Haggard, a leading neuroscientist who is a member of AGNIR and took part in the HPA 2012 review. Explaining the conclusion the report came to, he said, “The tricky thing in this area is to look at the balance of the evidence and it’s important also to consider the quality of the evidence.” He added: “You might get a study which shows some effects from mobile phone signals. But it might be a small study with few participants, or it might be less well controlled than one would like. Our conclusion was that many of the reports of effects on the human brain or on human thinking from mobile phone signals tended not to stand up; they tended not to replicate. So if people did the experiment again, ideally in an independent laboratory, then they didn’t manage to reproduce the original finding, or there were some other problems with the experimental design.” A growing number of people and organisations, though, among them doctors and scientists, warn that the safety of mobile phones and similar technology, such as cordless phones and Wi-Fi, is far from a foregone conclusion and may indeed be cause for serious medical concern. Physicist Sarah Wright, who is a member of SSITA and Wired Child, spoke to Weekly Zaman about the reasons for this, explaining that all of these technologies use pulsed microwave radiation to carry signals. “In fact, Wi-Fi uses exactly the same frequency as a microwave oven,” she said, “but the industry try to imply that they are radio waves because it knows the public impression is that radio waves are okay, whereas people are slightly suspicious of microwaves because they know about the microwave oven cooking things. So they refer to the radiation as radio waves. Actually, technically, it is defined as microwave radiation, which is just higher frequency than radio waves.” This may mean that such wave frequencies are less innocuous than we have been led to believe, but according to Wright more work needs to be done to establish just what the effects of different parts of the spectrum are, as each frequency has different properties. This means that, for example, Wi-Fi and 3G may have different effects on the body, but these differences have yet to be studied in any depth. There are some researchers who point to the fact that there has not been a big increase in brain tumour incidence over the last couple of decades as evidence that mobiles are safe. Discussing this, Graham Lamburn of Powerwatch told Weekly Zaman: “The typical latency of a cancer for a brain tumour, for example, from other sources that we know cause them, like ionising radiation and nuclear radiation -- you’re typically looking at between 25 and 40 years from exposure. If we still don’t have a brain tumour incidence increase in 2030, then it’s unlikely they cause cancer at all, but the whole point of doing all this is to find out before we suddenly have a brain cancer problem and say, ‘Oh well, we should have done something 20 years ago’.” In 2011, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) changed the classification of radio frequency electromagnetic fields to 2B, which means they are now recognised to be a possible carcinogen. Mentioning some of the research that points to the dangers of the technology, Wright described experiments carried out by the European Union’s REFLEX Project, which studied the potential environmental hazards of low frequency electromagnetic field exposure. The study found that these frequencies resulted in double-strand DNA breaks in rat brains and human cells after exposure for a couple of hours. “Scientists know that double-strand DNA breaks lead to cancer and that is a known mechanism for cancer,” she explained, “and they found when they irradiated cells for a couple of hours, the DNA broke up -- basically at the same level of exposure used by mobile phones signals, Wi-Fi, etc.” Wright highlighted the fact that people often do not realise that Wi-Fi routers and cordless phone bases transmit all the time. “Wherever the base is or the Wi-Fi router is, it’s transmitting at quite high levels and then your whole house will be full of radiation, which is the same as if you were living opposite a mobile phone mast. It’s the same strength in your house,” Wright said. “There are two studies that were published in the early days showing a tripling of the incidence of cancer for people who lived within 400 metres of a phone mast after only five years.” Many people report that the radiation from these technologies can lead to insomnia and there’s research that may explain why. “There’s research showing that at night the radiation stops the body producing melatonin, which is something the body produces at night. It keeps you asleep, but it also kills pre-cancer cells and it’s part of the repair mechanism,” Wright explained. “There are quite a lot of studies showing that melatonin production decreases significantly -- down to 80 per cent of what it should be -- if you’re living with this technology, which is why a lot of people have such disturbed sleep. But it also damages the repair mechanism, so cancer cells can start to grow, and then there’s direct damage -- the double-strand DNA breaks which cause cancer -- that it also inflicts. So there are a lot of things going on.” Government approaches to these technologies vary across Europe. In France, children cannot use mobile phones in schools if they’re under 16, and schools are now encouraged not to use Wi-Fi. In areas of Austria and Germany, Wi-Fi in schools is banned. In Germany, the government has issued warnings about the use of cordless phones and Wi-Fi and public perception of the possible dangers of the technology is generally higher. Wi-Fi in schools is a particular concern for many. Diana Hanson of SSITA told Weekly Zaman: “If you cannot guarantee that a child would not be sitting in what we call a Wi-Fi hotspot for any length of time, then I would worry about that. The French National Assembly has recently voted to recommend that wired Internet be used in schools and not Wi-Fi. You have to ask yourself why they would have come to that decision if they didn’t feel that there was enough evidence for concern.” According to Wright, “children are being exposed all day, every day at school and it’s completely unnecessary because they hardly ever use laptops in the class. They’ve just got this transmitter blasting away all day for no reason. Scientists think it’s particularly bad for girls, who have their eggs in their ovaries at birth and could be infertile after 14 years of that. It’s sort of enforced exposure of our children. Even if we don’t want it, it’s being forced on us against our wishes, without our consent, without our knowledge, and no one has been warned and it’s actually a possible carcinogen which shouldn’t be in any workplace.” Haggard commented on the issue of Wi-Fi in schools, saying: “There still isn’t all that much research with children and much of the research that has been done is not very high quality. When we looked at the research in our report, we did not find any convincing evidence that exposure for children was a particular concern, but we noticed that there wasn’t as much evidence as one would like. For exposure of adult brains to mobile phone signals, there is now quite a lot of evidence, but for the exposure of developing children’s brains, there is rather less. So we still agree with the WHO that there’s need for more research in this area.” Haggard highlighted the importance of keeping abreast of the latest developments and research in the field. Apart from the issue of whether these technologies are safe to use in the long term, we are exposed to many different kinds of signals within the electromagnetic spectrum and these signals are changing all the time with the introduction of new technology. “We keep a watching brief on the research. We always need to be attentive to the possibility that new high-quality scientific evidence does emerge, and then we need to be aware of the possibility of implications for health. We continue to monitor the area very carefully.” http://www.weeklyzaman.com/en/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=7795&columnistId=0