Effect of Mobile Phone Radiation on Human Health

The effect of mobile phone radiation on human health is a subject of interest and study worldwide, as a result of the enormous increase in mobile phone usage throughout the world.

As of 2015, there were 7.4 billion subscriptions worldwide, though the actual number of users is lower as many users own more than one mobile phone. Mobile phones use electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range (450–2100 MHz). Other digital wireless systems , such as data communication networks, produce similar radiation.

Mobile phone use does not increase the risk of getting brain cancer or other head tumors. 

Effects

•Blood–brain barrier

Evidence does not support the hypothesis that mobile phone radiation has an effect on the permeability of the blood-brain barrier .

•Cancer

Mobile phone use does not increase the risk of getting brain cancer or other head tumors. As the United States National Cancer Institute explains: Radiofrequency energy, unlike ionizing radiation, does not cause DNA damage that can lead to cancer. Its only consistently observed biological effect in humans is tissue heating. In animal studies, it has not been found to cause cancer or to enhance the cancer-causing effects of known chemical carcinogens.

Electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

Some users of mobile phones and similar devices have reported feeling various non-specific symptoms during and after use. Studies have failed to link any of these symptoms to electromagnetic exposure. (In addition, EHS is not a recognised medical diagnosis.)

Precautions.

Precautionary principle In 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that the precautionary principle could be voluntarily adopted in this case. [20] It follows the recommendations of the European Community for environmental risks. According to the WHO, the "precautionary principle" is "a risk management policy applied in circumstances with a high degree of scientific uncertainty, reflecting the need to take action for a potentially serious risk without awaiting the results of scientific research." 

Other less stringent recommended approaches are prudent avoidance principle and as low as reasonably practicable . Although all of these are problematic in application, due to the widespread use and economic importance of wireless telecommunication systems in modern civilization, there is an increased popularity of such measures in the general public, though also evidence that such approaches may increase concern.

They involve recommendations such as the minimization of cellphone usage, the limitation of use by at-risk population (such as children), the adoption of cellphones and microcells with as low as reasonably practicable levels of radiation, the wider use of hands-free and earphone technologies such as Bluetooth headsets, the adoption of maximal standards of exposure, RF field intensity and distance of base stations antennas from human habitations, and so forth. [ citation needed] Overall, public information remains a challenge as various health consequences are evoked in the literature and by the media, putting populations under chronic exposure to potentially worrying information. 

Precautionary measures and health advisories.

In May 2011, the World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer announced it was classifying electromagnetic fields from mobile phones and other sources as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" and advised the public to adopt safety measures to reduce exposure, like use of hands-free devices or texting.

Some national radiation advisory authorities, including those of Austria, France, Germany, and Sweden, have recommended measures to minimize exposure to their citizens. Examples of the recommendations are:

•Use hands-free to decrease the radiation to the head.

•Keep the mobile phone away from the body.

•Do not use telephone in a car without an external antenna.

The use of "hands-free" was not recommended by the British

Consumers' Association in a statement in November 2000, as they believed that exposure was increased. However, measurements for the (then) UK Department of Trade and Industry and others for the French l’Agence française de sécurité sanitaire environnementale (fr) showed substantial reductions. In 2005, Professor Lawrie Challis and others said clipping a ferrite bead onto hands-free kits stops the radio waves travelling up the wire and into the head.

Several nations have advised moderate use of mobile phones for children. A journal by Gandhi et al. in 2006 states that children receive higher levels of SAR. When 5- and 10-year olds are compared to adults, they receive about 153% higher SAR levels. Also, with the permittivity of the brain decreasing as one gets older and the higher relative volume of the exposed growing brain in children, radiation penetrates far beyond the mid-brain.