Using a mobile phone while pregnant can seriously damage your baby

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Women who use mobile phones when pregnant are more likely to give

birth to children with behavioural problems, according to

authoritative research.

A giant study, which surveyed more than 13,000 children, found that

using the handsets just two or three times a day was enough to raise

the risk of their babies developing hyperactivity and difficulties

with conduct, emotions and relationships by the time they reached

school age. And it adds that the likelihood is even greater if the

children themselves used the phones before the age of seven.

The results of the study, the first of its kind, have taken the top

scientists who conducted it by surprise. But they follow warnings

against both pregnant women and children using mobiles by the

official Russian radiation watchdog body, which believes that the

peril they pose " is not much lower than the risk to children's health

from tobacco or alcohol " .

The research – at the universities of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

and Aarhus, Denmark – is to be published in the July issue of the

journal Epidemiology and will carry particular weight because one of

its authors has been sceptical that mobile phones pose a risk to

health.

UCLA's Professor Leeka Kheifets – who serves on a key committee of

the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection,

the body that sets the guidelines for exposure to mobile phones –

wrote three and a half years ago that the results of studies on

people who used them " to date give no consistent evidence of a causal

relationship between exposure to radiofrequency fields and any

adverse health effect " .

The scientists questioned the mothers of 13,159 children born in

Denmark in the late 1990s about their use of the phones in pregnancy,

and their children's use of them and behaviour up to the age of

seven. As they gave birth before mobiles became universal, about half

of the mothers had used them infrequently or not at all, enabling

comparisons to be made.

They found that mothers who did use the handsets were 54 per cent

more likely to have children with behavioural problems and that the

likelihood increased with the amount of potential exposure to the

radiation. And when the children also later used the phones they

were, overall, 80 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties

with behaviour. They were 25 per cent more at risk from emotional

problems, 34 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties

relating to their peers, 35 per cent more likely to be hyperactive,

and 49 per cent more prone to problems with conduct.

The scientists say that the results were " unexpected " , and that they

knew of no biological mechanisms that could cause them. But when they

tried to explain them by accounting for other possible causes – such

as smoking during pregnancy, family psychiatric history or socio-

economic status – they found that, far from disappearing, the

association with mobile phone use got even stronger.

They add that there might be other possible explanations that they

did not examine – such as that mothers who used the phones frequently

might pay less attention to their children – and stress that the

results " should be interpreted with caution " and checked by further

studies. But they conclude that " if they are real they would have

major public health implications " .

Professor Sam Milham, of the blue-chip Mount Sinai School of Medicine

in New York, and the University of Washington School of Public

Health – one of the pioneers of research in the field – said last

week that he had no doubt that the results were real. He pointed out

that recent Canadian research on pregnant rats exposed to similar

radiation had found structural changes in their offspring's brains.

The Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection

says that use of the phones by both pregnant women and children

should be " limited " . It concludes that children who talk on the

handsets are likely to suffer from " disruption of memory, decline of

attention, diminishing learning and cognitive abilities, increased

irritability " in the short term, and that longer-term hazards

include " depressive syndrome " and " degeneration of the nervous

structures of the brain " .