August 30, 2007 |
By John Pospisil

New research has reignited fears of links between mobile phone usage and cancer.

It's generally believed by the scientific community that electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones can only damage tissue by heating it, which is one of the reasons why mobile phones are considered safe.

However, Israeli scientists have found that electromagnetic radiation generated by mobile phone handsets can trigger cell division after five minutes of exposure, according to a report in New Scientist.

Cancer researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, exposed rat and human cells to electromagnetic radiation similar to that generated by a mobile phone, but at one tenth the power.

After five minutes they observed the production of extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERK1/2), which is a naturally occurring chemical that stimulates cell division and growth.

Cancers occur when the growth of cells cannot be controlled by the body.

The head of the research team, Prof Rony Seger said that the the real significance of the findings was that cells are not inert to non-thermal mobile phone radiation.

"We used radiation power levels that were around one tenth of those produced by a normal mobile. The changes we observed were clearly not caused by heating."

However, the jury is still out on the implications of the study.

"The research is certainly interesting. However, they saw a very transient activation of this pathway, which we know is not sufficient to promote cell division," Simon Cook, a biochemist at the Babraham Institute, told the Telegraph.

"In cancer you see a much stronger, persistent and sustained activation and even this is just one of many changes required for cancer development."