TR Daily 2008 June 06
STUDY TO LOOK FOR CELLPHONE-CANCER LINK
British researchers have launched a study to see whether the long-term use of mobile phones is linked to brain tumors and illnesses such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. The $6.1 million study by Imperial College London researchers is part of the United Kingdom's Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme. It will involve monitoring 200,000 mobile phone users in Europe, including 90,000 in the U.K., over at least 20 years.


http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/hea
lth-risk-of-longterm-mobile-phone-use-to-be-studied-by-scientists-842489.htm
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The Independent on Sunday

Health risk of long-term mobile phone use to be studied by scientists

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 8 June 2008

Scientists have started work on a massive official study to discover whether
the long-term use of mobile phones causes brain cancer, and Alzheimer's and
Parkinson's diseases.

The study ­ whose launch vindicates an Independent on Sunday campaign to
draw attention to potential risks of using handsets for over a decade ­ will
initially involve 200,000 people in Britain, Denmark and Sweden, and hopes
to increase its range to other European countries. The British part of it
alone will cost £3.1m, provided jointly by the Government and by the
mobile-phone industry.

The research ­ which is being led in Britain by a team from Imperial
College, London, under the auspices of the Mobile Telecommunications and
Health Research (MTHR) Programme ­ will follow 90,000 mobile-phone users in
this country over the years, to see what happens to them. It is important
because cancers take at least 10 years ­ and normally much longer ­ to
develop, but the phones have spread so rapidly and recently that relatively
few people have been using them for that long. Official assurances that the
phones do not cause the disease have been of little value as they are based
on research that, at best, includes few people who have been exposed to
radiation from the phones long enough.

Last October, this newspaper reported that the most comprehensive study to
date ­ a review of all the research on people exposed for more than a decade
­ had found that they were twice as likely to get brain cancer on the side
of the head where they held the handset.

Last night, Mike Bell, chairman of the Radiation Research Trust, hailed the
launch of the new study as a "breakthrough" and said it had partly come
about because of the way the IoS had put the issue "into the public domain".