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| courtesy: research medical center |
Children
born to mothers who frequently used cell phones prenatally were more likely to
have hyperactivity/inattention problems as compared to those who used it less
frequently.
The lead author
Laura Birks is not advising the mothers to stop using cell phones, but just be cautions
and use it in moderation because the research has still not proved causation.
An earlier
study published in Journal Epidemiology in 2008 also found that mothers who did use
the handsets were 54 per cent more likely to have children with behavioral
problems and that the likelihood increased with the amount of potential
exposure to the radiation.
In the
current study the researchers analyzed 83,884 mother-child pairs in five
cohorts from Denmark, Korea, Netherlands, Norway and Spain during various time periods
from 1996 to 2011.
The cell
phone use was divided into none, low, medium, and high based on the usage
reported by mother.
The earliest
cohort from Denmark between 1996–2002 was the only cohort having enough women
who did not use cell phones while pregnant.
Children
born to mothers who were on cell phones for at least 4 calls/day or in another
cohort for an hour/day were 28% more likely to be hyperactive as compared to
children whose mothers made 1 or fewer call per day.
The
association was found consistently across all cohorts, both for prospective and
retrospective collected data.
Researchers
are raising more questions after the results of study was published.
Dr. Robin
Hansen, a pediatrician and professor at the University of California, Davis in
Sacramento opines that the study does not answer the question whether it is the
actual handset or your parenting behavior that causes the psychological
problems.
She said in
an interview with Medscape “Now we have to dig deeper and figure out why? Is it
the electronic signals that go through your brain and your body, or how it
changes your interactions with your child postnatally?”
She also
said that we also need to look at the fact that those mothers who are busy on
cellphones do not have enough time for their children, shaping their behavior
differently. Children become hyperactive and through tantrum to get the parents
away from the cell phone and before long it becomes a habit.
The Russian
National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection advises to limit the
use of phone in children too. It concludes that children who talk on the
handsets are likely to suffer from "disruption of memory, decline of
attention, diminishing learning and cognitive abilities, increased
irritability" in the short term, and that longer-term hazards include
"depressive syndrome" and "degeneration of the nervous
structures of the brain".
On July
1,2015 more than one hundred medical doctors, scientists and public health
experts from around the world have signed a Joint Statement advising pregnant
women to take simple precautions to protect themselves and their babies from
wireless radiation. The Statement is part of a national right-to-know campaign
called the BabySafe Project created by two non-profit organizations to inform
pregnant women about the issue.
"The
wireless world may be convenient, but it's not without risks," says
Patricia Wood, Executive Director of Grassroots Environmental Education and
co-creator of the BabySafe Project. "When more than one hundred of the
world's leading medical doctors and researchers on wireless radiation say we
have enough evidence for women to take protective action, we think women should
know about it."
