Biggest study into mobile phone health effects launched

Research to track 250,000 mobile users for up to 30 years

Health study aims to nail any link between mobile phones and cancer

The biggest study ever into the health effects of mobile phone usage has just been launched.

The study, called Cosmos, aims to track 250,000 mobile phone users in five European countries, including between 90,000 and 100,000 in the UK, for up to 30 years.

There are more than six billion mobile phones in use around the world, including 70 million in the UK.

Cosmos will look at changes in the frequency of specific symptoms over time, such as headaches and sleep disorders. It will also assess risks associated with cancers, benign tumours, neurological and cerebrovascular diseases.

The UK research will be conducted by Imperial College London, and funded through the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme (MTHR), with additional money from the government and the mobile phone industry.

MTHR programme management committee chairman professor David Coggon said: " This study should add important knowledge to our understanding of whether there are significant long-term health risks from the use of mobile phones."

Coggon also argued that the parallel collection of similar data in several Euorpean countries would give "added value".

A recent MTHR report explained the reasons for conducting such a large study: "It will address the significant uncertainties that can only be resolved by monitoring the health of a large cohort of phone users over a long period of time.”

Since cancers can develop over many years, those uncertainties can only be uncovered by a statistically significant and lengthy study – which means a significant number of users being monitored over a long period of time.