Mobile phones and base stations: health implications

1
Mobile phones and base stations health
implications

• Dr Susan Turnbull
• Director of Public Health, Bournemouth

2
Facts and figures

• Around 62 million mobile phones in use in UK
• Popularity increasing
• Base stations and their antenna masts needed to
  serve these
• Number increasing in line with increase in phones
• About 47,000 base stations now in the UK

3
HPA Website www.hpa.org.uk

• Mobile telephony and health pages
• Phones
• Mobile phones held near head, highest exposure
• All phones sold in UK below prescribed exposure
  guidelines

4
Base stations

• Antennae typically tens of metres away from the
  public
• Exposure more even over the body but at much
  lower level than from a mobile phone
• Network operators cooperate with international
  guidelines
• Typical exposures at locations accessible to the
  public thousands of times lower that guideline
  safety levels

5
Overview

• Unwise to declare anything risk free
• Relatively new technology
• Good public health grounds for precautionary
  approach
• Possibility of any harm to health being kept
  under continuing surveillance HPA and
  internationally
• So far, little evidence of cause for concern
• Greatest risk associated with mobile phone use
  whilst driving