According to a recent animal study, being exposed to radiation from mobile phones during pregnancy could lead to brain damage in the unborn child, later mental health issues and symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Researchers at Yale University in America compared the effects of mobile phone radiation on pregnant mice. Mice in close proximity to active mobile phones had offspring with; significantly worse memory, heightened anxiety levels and distinct signs of hyperactivity when compared to the offspring of un-exposed mice.
The scientists argued that the differences in offspring mental health and behaviour arose due to the fact that the development of brain neurones in the prefrontal cortex was impaired by the radiation of the mobile phone. The same brain damage is thought to occur in children whose mothers were exposed to large amounts of mobile phone radiation during pregnancy and is thought to account for the growing numbers of children being diagnosed with behaviour disorders such as ADHD.
However, there has been controversy and outrage by other leading researchers, some arguing that the findings are “alarmist and unjustified” that the effects of mobile phone radiation, on mice, were automatically being assumed to be the same in human populations. Additionally, further debate over the methodology of the study arose after it was reported that; the radiation came from an uninterrupted, active call to a phone placed above the pregnant mice’s’ cage for the entire gestation period of 17 days.
The study published in the journal Scientific Reports, is said to be the first experimental evidence connecting mobile phone radiation and fatal development and more research needs to be done in human populations to establish if the rise in behavioural disorders could partly be due to the ever increasing exposure to mobile phone radiation and in what quantities should be deemed harmful.
