MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Using a mobile phone stirs brain metabolism, says US medical report

However health consequences are still unknown

Using a mobile phone for 50 minutes stirs brain metabolism, although the health consequences are unknown and need to be studied further, U.S. researchers said.

When mobile phones were on and held against the ear, brain glucose metabolism, a marker of brain cell activity, was about 7% higher in areas closest to the antenna than when phones were off, a study in Journal of the American Medical Association found. The study, the first to show the effects of mobile-phone use on brain metabolism, was done by researchers from the US National Institutes of Health in Maryland, and Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York.

Studies, including a report last year from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, have produced conflicting results over the health dangers of mobile phones, particularly their link to cancer. The latest findings show that human brain metabolism is sensitive to the effects of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, a form of radiation, from mobile phones.

“The peer-reviewed scientific evidence has overwhelmingly indicated that wireless devices, within the limits established by the FCC, do not pose a public health risk or cause any adverse health effects” John Walls, vice president of public affairs for CTIA, (The Wireless Association) said in an e-mail. “The leading global health organizations such as the American Cancer Society, National Cancer Institute, World Health Organization and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration all have concurred that wireless devices are not a public health risk.”

The researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Brookhaven National Laboratory included 47 people in the study. They placed mobile phones on the right and left ears of participants and then measured brain glucose metabolism once when the phone on the right side was on but muted for 50 minutes and a second time when both cell phones were off. After 50 minutes, the patients had their brain activity measured using a positron emission tomography, or PET, scan.

Researchers found that only the regions closest to the antenna, the orbito-frontal cortex and the temporal pole, saw a rise in brain metabolism when the mobile phone was on. The orbito-frontal cortex plays a role in decision making and reward and punishment, and the temporal pole is involved in social and emotional processes.