Press release: No evidence of health effects from mobiles
No evidence of biological or adverse health effects from mobile phone technology
MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATIONS & HEALTH RESEARCH (MTHR) PROGRAMME – FINAL REPORT PUBLISHED
The UK’s largest programme of research into possible health risks from mobile phone technology has today published its final report, and finds no evidence of biological or adverse health effects. The report summarises studies completed since an earlier report in 2007.
The research programme found no evidence that exposure to base station emissions during pregnancy affects the risk of developing cancer in early childhood, and no evidence that use of mobile phones leads to an increased risk of leukaemia.
Professor David Coggon, Chairman of MTHR, said “When the MTHR programme was first set up, there were many scientific uncertainties about possible health risks from mobile phones and related technology. This independent programme is now complete, and despite exhaustive research, we have found no evidence of risks to health from the radio waves produced by mobile phones or their base stations. Thanks to the research conducted within the programme, we can now be much more confident about the safety of modern telecommunications systems. To be sure that there are no delayed adverse effects, which only become apparent after many years, the programme provided funding to set up an epidemiological investigation (the COSMOS study) which will follow-up a large population of mobile phone users long-term. Future Government support for this study and any new research on mobile phones and health will be managed by the Department of Health.”
Recognising concerns among members of the public and workers in the emergency services, the MTHR programme included large and well-designed investigations into the possible effects of emissions from TETRA radios and base stations that are used by the emergency services. Reassuringly this research found no evidence for adverse effects associated with exposure.
The programme also included research to investigate whether the modulation of radio signals that is used to encode speech and data for telecommunications could elicit specific effects in cells or tissues. No effects were found in any of the experiments, which used a wide range of tissue types and endpoints. When taken together with the results from provocation studies described in the previous MTHR report, this now constitutes a significant body of evidence that modulation of signals does not lead to health risks.
The £13.6 million MTHR programme has been jointly funded by the UK government and the telecommunications industry. Throughout its existence, the programme has been overseen by an independent Programme Management Committee (PMC), to ensure that none of the funding bodies could influence the outcomes of the research. The PMC selected and monitored all studies in the programme.
This report effectively brings the programme to a conclusion after 11 years of detailed research and, when taken together with the earlier 2007 Report, provides a complete summary of the projects supported. It also summarises work undertaken to improve the assessment of exposures, and includes detailed descriptions of the exposure systems used for the provocation studies in the programme. Most of the research results generated by the programme have been published in the peer-reviewed scientific and medical literature, resulting in around 60 papers.
MTHR P/10
10 February 2014
NOTES FOR EDITORS
The Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme was set up in response to the research recommendations contained within the ‘Stewart Report’ published in May 2000.
The Programme received approximately £13.6 million of funding from a variety of government and industry sources.
To ensure the independence of the research carried out, scientific management of the programme was entrusted to an independent Programme Management Committee made up of independent experts, mostly senior university academics. Funds contributed by the sponsors of the Programme were managed on behalf of the Committee by the Department of Health as Secretariat to the Programme.
The first Chairman of the Programme Management Committee was Sir William Stewart. Professor Lawrie Challis became chairman on Sir William’s retirement in November 2002, and was succeeded as chairman by Professor David Coggon in January 2008.
The Programme was set up in 2001 and has supported 31 individual research projects, mostly undertaken in UK universities. Of these, one remains ongoing and will be managed as part of the Department of Health’s Policy Research Programme. All the remaining projects have been completed and most results have been published in peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals (almost 60 papers to date).
The results of the programme are summarised in the Report 2007 and the Report 2012. Both reports outline the state of knowledge at the time of the Stewart Report and the current state of knowledge, taking account of both research supported by the Programme and that carried out elsewhere. The latest report also includes advice to the Department of Health on future research priorities.
Both reports and details of all the projects supported by the Programme are published on its website (http://www.mthr.org.uk).