Become a fan of h2g2 Half a billion people worldwide now use a
mobile phone, with more signing up every day, so it was
inevitable that the scare-stories would start. In the 1960s
people worried about the X-rays coming from their colour TVs.
These days you can hardly turn the page of a tabloid newspaper
without discovering a new story, or some artfully drawn diagram
demonstrating how microwaves from mobiles heat up the brain.
Twice in the late 1990s, experiments with animals have actually
suggested that there is a link between mobile phone emissions
and DNA damage or cancer, and these were widely reported in the
press. However, a huge number of other experiments have shown
nothing of the sort. In fact, one of the strangest results was
published in April 1999, where memory loss was studied in
volunteers with microwave emitters strapped to their heads.
There was no difference in memory performance when the emitter
was switched off or on, but bizarrely, when the devices were
switched on and broadcasting a signal