Cell phone hawkers have their crosshairs on kids as a target market for their wares, but should parents resist purchasing mobiles for their children?
Wireless carriers have begun
pushing their "family" plans to provide some
economic ammunition for kids pleading with mom and
dad for a mobile. And outfits like Firefly Mobile
are designing products to push cell phone
use down the age bracket to children as young as 8
years old.
While some people -- many of them in the education field -- see the metastasizing of mobiles within the junior set as a menace to decorum, others see serious cell phone and cancer health threats looming from the practice.
Cell phone and child. A cause for concern
Cell phone and cancer? Citing a caution issued in January by the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) in the United Kingdom, Henry Lai, a research professor at the department of bioengineering at the University of Washington, told TechNewsWorld that parents should be concerned that cell phones may be harmful to young children.
"Not very much research has been done on children or young animals [which can serve as models for children], but the results from other studies seem to indicate that there is a cause for concern," he said.
In its caution, the NRPB warned, "It is not possible at present to say that exposure to RF radiation, even at levels below national guidelines, is totally without potential adverse health effects."
The board also cited the findings in a report released in May 2000 by the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones that "children might be more vulnerable to any effects arising from the use of mobile phones because of their developing nervous system, the greater absorption of energy in the tissues of the head and the longer lifetime of exposure."
Nevertheless, Lai, an authority on the biological effects of non-ionizing radiation, conceded that "we don't know yet how the body responds to cell phone radiation."
When it was released, the NRPB document elicited a strong response from the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States.
Cell phone and cancer studies
"A few
studies have suggested low levels of radiofrequency
energy exposure could accelerate the development of
cancer in laboratory animals; however, these studies
have failed to be replicated and the vast majority
of studies reported in the scientific literature
show no adverse health effect associated with low
levels of radio frequency energy exposure," the
agency said in a statement.
Follow the Science
"With mobile phones," he continued, "they've looked in people, but of course you can say, maybe it takes 30 years of use for it to happen. That's not impossible. Most things that cause cancer do take 20 to 30 years or more to do it."
