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Long-term study into health effects of mobile phone use

A new international study is to be carried out into the long-term health effects of mobile phone use.

The research will span a 20-30 year period and will track the health records of 250,000 million participants aged 18 to 69 years, in five countries, including the UK. Network operators, including O2 and Vodafone have agreed to invite a random selection of its customers to participate in the research, which will check for increased rates of various diseases such as cancer, dementia and conditions including sleep disorders and depression.

The Cohort Study on Mobile Communications (Cosmos) is funded by the government’s mobile telecommunications research programme (MTHR).

Up to now, studies on the short-term use of mobile phones have not shown any signicantly worrying trends but the purpose of this study is to verify whether prolonged use of mobile devices could lead to diseases which take years to develop.

Professor Lawrie Challis, of the MTHR management committee said: “The balance of scientific evidence to date does not suggest that mobile phones cause cancer but, because of the uncertainty, we cannot rule out the possibility that it might.”

He added: "With many cancers it takes 10 or 20 years for symptoms to show, and most of us have not had mobile phones that long. There just hasn't been enough time for cancer to develop."