Sir, As your report suggests, there is indeed a significant health risk posed by devices that emit non-ionising radio-frequency radiation (“Cancer study ordered into mobile phones”, report, Jan 20).

The phenomenon was first described in 1945 as “microwave sickness”, by Soviet scientists trying to determine why radio and radar operators were developing neurological and cognitive difficulties.

International regulating agencies, as well as the mobile phone and wireless industry, suggest that there is currently “no evidence” to suggest that negative health effects result from such emissions. Digging up the thousands of studies to the contrary is one approach a concerned citizen might take.

Why not just follow the money trail and ask why the insurance industry has refused, since the late 1990s, to insure telephone companies for the potential health effects of their wireless and mobile products?

DR DAVID FANCY
Brock University, St Catharines, Ontario

Sir, Six years ago, after the publication of the Stewart report, the Department of Health issued a leaflet warning against mobile phone use by under-16s. Similarly, the industry made a commitment not to market phones to children.

Successive ministers have failed to take any positive action to promote the advice in schools or inform parents of this precautionary policy.

Consequently, we have a generation of children addicted to their mobiles and at risk. Given the huge amount of publicity about junk food and other issues affecting the young, it is surprising that the Government keeps so quiet about mobile phones.

Maybe it’s something to do with the £23 billion it received from the industry in licence fees.

KAREN BARRATT
Winchester, Hants

Sir, My father is an electronic engineer, and he wouldn’t have a mobile phone for years; he knew the possible effects of the radiation they send out.

Do people realise that mobiles are pumping out radiation all the time they are switched on? Every second or so, they send out a signal. This would be less than the radiation transmitted when a phone is in use, but if the phone is switched on all day, it could have a similar cumulative effect, increased if in a rural area or a car, where the signal is amplified to reach the transmitter.

How many people keep a phone in their pocket, near a woman’s ovaries and a man’s prostate, which are particularly susceptible to cancer, and leave it switched on all day?

STELLA JOB
Kidlington, Oxon

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