Cell phones linked to behavioral problems

In 2010, Hanyia Naqvi was working on a Yale School of Medicine project to study the effects of cell phone radiation on brain growth. The researchers taped old flip phones to the sides of cages with pregnant mice inside. The phones fascinated the mice, remembered Naqvi, a master's degree candidate at Southern Connecticut State University. "Some mice would just come and sit there," she said.

Two years later, the data from the study, finally published, reveals that pregnant women should be wary of spending any unnecessary time with their phones. Hugh Taylor '83, one of the authors of the study, said his team exposed the unborn mice to radiation from phone signals constantly until their birth, a total of about 19 days. The pups later showed subtle but consistent differences in behavior, and samples of their brain tissue responded differently in electrical experiments.

Taylor and the other authors stressed that their findings, published online in Scientific Reports on March 15, may not apply to humans. But as a simple precaution, Taylor suggested that pregnant women keep their phones away from their bodies as much as possible. This study adds to concern among scientists about a number of suspected health consequences of cell phone radiation, but is the first experimental confirmation of an effect on brain development in utero that lasts into adulthood.

"This is really just the beginning of a wider investigation," Taylor said.

The researchers conducted a number of behavioral tests on the mice, including one for memory in which they gave the mice toys such as rubber duckies and ping pong balls. The following day, the researchers returned the same toys to the mouse's cage, but on the third day, they gave the mice only one of the toys along with something new. The goal was to see if the mice were more interested in the new object, or if they seemed to remember the old toy at all.

Taylor described the mice in the experimental group as "hyperactive" and "happy-go-lucky." They had weaker memories, were more active, and less anxious than their counterparts who had not been exposed to cell phone radiation. He said the differences were slight and would not have been apparent without the tests.

He and his co-authors noted that according to recent research, children today are more likely to develop hyperactivity disorders, and the group speculated that pregnant women's use of cell phones might be a partial explanation.

John Walls, a vice president of the Washington, D.C., lobbying group CTIA-The Wireless Association, emphasized the differences between mice and humans in response to the concerns raised by the study.

"This new animal study presents results that, as the study authors themselves recognize, require other analysis and validation before any scientific conclusions may be reached of any relevance to human health," he said in an email.

Bryan Luikart, a professor at Dartmouth Medical School, said he would not recommend that people use their cell phones differently based on the results of the Yale study. The scale of the changes found in mouse behavior is relatively small, even though the mice's mothers had been exposed to radiation from the phones constantly during pregnancy, he said. He added that he would like to see the experiment duplicated by another group.

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Cell phones linked to behavioral problems