The Journal of the American Medical Association will soon publish an article on the effects of the use of a cell phone on the glucose concentration in the region of the brain close to the antenna. According to the Preliminary Communication published today, the brain cells exposed to 50 minutes of radiation from the cell phone had a significant increase in their glucose metabolism of about 7 percent. Its clinical significance, however, is yet unknown.
Though I understand the clinical study conducted and the scientific method applied, there are some comments that I would like to vent.
The first one is about the state of the mobile phones used. The article mentions that they were on for 50 minutes. But what does "on" mean exactly? Were they just on standby, waiting for a call? Was a call being made? If so, for how long? Was there any data passed between the cell phone and its base station? But the total "talk time", or better, transmission time, is not revealed in the article.
Moreover, its is known that the amount of power transmitted by the cell phone depends on the distance to the base station. Fortunately, the cell phone decreases its output power when channel conditions are good enough, thereby extending its talk time and reducing co-channel interference. This thus implies that the amount of radiated power is another unknown in this study.
Finally, and this becomes evident from a literature study and experiments conducted by our own Mark Stoopman, the amount of energy being absorbed by brain tissue strongly depends on the frequency being used. This, in turn, depends on the type of service (GSM, UMTS, etc.) and the provider being used. GSM 1800, for instance, in use by, e.g., T-Mobile, leads to more tissue absorption than GSM 900.
All-in-all, a lot of unknows, if you ask me.
Wouter
