Brits to research health effects of extended cellphone use

WASHINGTON-A British mobile phone radiation expert and the country’s health agency reportedly plan to study the long-term health effects of mobile phone use.
Dr. Lawrie Challis, a physics professor and chairman of the independent Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research program, told The Times of London he is close to securing $3.8 million in funding from England’s health department to track 200,000 individuals for at least five years to determine whether their cellphones might be contributing to cancer and other diseases.
“You find absolutely nothing for ten years and then after that it starts to grow dramatically,” Challis told The Times. “It goes up ten times. You look at what happened after the atomic bombs at Nagasaki, Hiroshima. You find again a long delay, nothing for ten years. The same for asbestos.”
That some prior studies failed to find an association between mobile phone use and adverse health effects does not appear not to phase Challis. “The fact that you don’t see anything in ten years is also more or less what you would expect if there is something happening,” he told the paper.
Challis and Britain’s health department could not be immediately reached for comment.
Challis, an emeritus professor of physics at Nottingham University, succeeded Sir William Stewart as chairman of the MTHR Program Management Committee in November 2002.
Health agencies here and overseas say scientific data has yet to link mobile phone use to cancer and other biological consequences, but they insist research should continue-especially regarding cellular usage of 10 years and longer-because of studies that indicate handsets may not be completely safe.
A handful of brain cancer suits are pending against mobile phone carriers, manufacturers and industry trade groups in the United States. No suit has succeeded since the cancer link was first alleged in a lawsuit more than a dozen years ago. Most wireless health research is being conducted outside the United States.