- Prolonged use of mobile phones can lead to permanent
eye damage including cataracts, scientists believe.
-
- Medical researchers have found that microwave radiation
of the type emitted by mobile phones causes eye tissue to "bubble"
- a precursor to the formation of cataracts - and can also interfere with
the ability to focus.
-
- Professor Levi Schachter, who led the Israeli team which
conducted the study, warned: "Our results show that microwaves can
cause irreparable damage. Our advice to people with mobile phones is not
to use them if they have the option of using a land line until we can conduct
more research."
-
- The new findings will reignite the debate into the safety
of mobile phones, after warnings from a Government minister earlier this
year that parents should be "very careful" about how much time
children spend talking on their handsets. More than 50 million mobiles
are in use in Britain.
-
- The new study, conducted by the Rappaport Faculty of
Medicine at the Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, found clear risk
to eyesight.
-
- Scientists exposed lenses taken from male calves - whose
eyes, until they are two years old, have close similarities to humans'
- to mild heat, comparable to the raised temperature caused by extended
mobile phone use, and to microwave radiation no greater than emissions
from mobile phones. After two weeks the lenses, kept in a culture medium,
were compared with others which had not been similarly exposed, to identify
biological changes.
-
- Prof Schachter's team found that the exposed lenses were
less able to focus clearly on a beam of light, which would cause an eye
to record a blurred image - but found that over time, when exposure stopped,
the damage healed. However the exposure also caused bubbles to form within
the tissue of the lens, which did not disappear over time - an indication
of development of cataracts, or permanent eye damage.
-
- Prof Schachter said: "There has been much research
to determine whether mobile phones cause cancer or brain damage, but until
now very little on their effects on vision."
-
- Shortly after the study was published in the Journal
of Bioelectromagnetics the authors were invited to present their findings
to the Israeli parliamentary health committee. The country's health advisory
body subsequently urged the Israeli government to fund more such studies.
-
- Last year a major review by the International Commission
for Non-Ionising Radiation of all published research concluded that there
was "no consistent or convincing evidence of a causal relation"
between mobile phone use and any adverse health effects.
-
- However, the new findings have provoked consternation
in Britain. Dr Michael Clark, a spokesman for the Health Protection Agency,
said British researchers should broaden the range of possible dangers being
investigated.
-
- "This is a good piece of work that is properly published
and we are looking at it carefully," he said. "If future research
delivers the same or similar results then public health practices may need
to be re-examined."
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
-
- http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2
005/08/07/nmob07.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/07/ixhome.html
|