It impacts shape and function of skin proteins

Feb 25, 2008 09:22 GMT  ·  By

You would stay for hours talking on your brand-new mobile phone. Do you think that the molecules of your body are non-responsive to the radiation emitted by the mobile phones?

You should know that researchers have linked radiation of 884 MHz to insomnia, headaches and concentration difficulties. A recent Israeli research has connected the use of cell phones for many hours daily to a 50% increase on the likelihood of developing mouth cancer, compared to individuals who do not use cell phones at all. Moreover, cell phone users in rural areas could have a higher risk for cancer because cell phones have to emit higher levels of radiation for picking up the signal of the fewer available antennas.

A new research made at the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) and published in the journal "BMC Genomics" focused on the effects of mobile phone radiation on human skin. Previous research had revealed that mobile phone radiation (radiofrequency modulated electromagnetic fields or RF-EMF) affected the protein structure and activity in human endothelial cell line. The new research investigated the effects brought by local exposure of human skin to RF-EMF.

For checking these effects, a small patch of forearm's skin in 10 subjects was exposed to GSM signal for 60 minutes. After that, the researchers made skin biopsies from exposed and non-exposed areas and analyzed all extractable proteins. Out of 580 encountered proteins, eight were significantly impacted by the radiation.

"Mobile phone radiation has some biological effect. Even if the changes are small, they still exist," said Dariusz Leszczynski, Research Professor at STUK.

"It is much too early to say will these changes induced by the mobile phone radiation have any effect on health. The aim of this project was not detecting any possible health effects, but to find out whether living human skin responds to mobile phone radiation and whether proteomics approach is useful in sorting out this issue," added Leszczynski.