Pregnant women need not worry about cellphone use

Helen Thomson, biomedical news editor

(Image: Jose Luis Pelaez Inc/Getty Images)

"Mums-to-be warned exposing babies in the womb to mobile phones 'could give them behaviour problems'," reported British newspaper website Mail Online yesterday. "Mobile phones could damage unborn babies, researchers claim," said its compatriot The Telegraph.

For any pregnant woman these headlines could cause quite a shock. In fact, both are misleading.

The headlines stem from a new study into the effects of radiation exposure on unborn mice. It is certainly true that the study, published in Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/srep00312), found evidence of hyperactivity and anxiety in mice born after this kind of exposure. Newborn mice are not necessarily a good model for newborn babies, though. And more importantly, pregnant women are incredibly unlikely to be exposed to the high dose of radiation that would be equivalent to what was given to the mice in the experiment.

The study exposed 33 pregnant mice to radiation from an active cellphone above their cage. The phone was set on a permanent call for 17 days, which is almost the mice's full gestation period.

The researchers compared the behaviour and brain activity of pups born after such exposure with that seen in pups born to mice that were not exposed to cellphone radiation. The "cellphone" pups showed signs of hyperactivity, anxiety and poor memory not seen in the control group.

Is this finding relevant to pregnant women? One of the researchers on the study - Hugh Taylor, from Yale University - apparently thinks it is. He is quoted in several articles saying he believes that mobile phones might be "partly responsible for rising rates of behavioural disorders such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder".

Other researchers are not so sure. Eric Taylor, a child psychiatrist from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, says that "much more care" is needed when extrapolating directly from mice to humans. He adds that the radiation dose in the experiment was large, and the "researchers' tests of animal memory should not be directly equated to human attention [because] different species can react differently".

Katya Rubia, also from the Institute of Psychiatry, goes further. She says that the link made between mice and humans is "alarmist and unjustified".

How do we know they said this? Because Taylor and Rubia's comments appear in the Telegraph and Mail articles, respectively - beneath those sensational headlines.

Scientific research happens in order to gain an understanding of a larger problem, and it is often justified to report on such work and its potential implications for humans. But when we as reporters receive - and print - so much criticism of a new scientific paper, shouldn't we make more effort to reflect that criticism in our headlines?

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1d7ef965/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A120C0A30Ccellphone0Epregnant0Emice0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

monday night football monday night football bonjovi bonjovi antonio brown martial law is jon bon jovi dead