Finnish group to test cellphone radiation on human skin

A radiation watchdog group in Finland called the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority will be testing the effects of cellphone radiation on the skin of human volunteers. The ten volunteers, who are all employees at the group, will have small areas of their skin exposed to cellphone radiation for the duration of a long call or about one hour. Skin samples will be taken after the exposure and compared with one before.

Some high-profile and very expensive lawsuits have alleged that excessive radiation from mobile phones cause cancer, namely brain tumors. In November of last year, the United States Supreme Court refused to throw out several class-action suits, which totaled several hundred million dollars, against Motorola, Nokia, Nextel Communications, Sprint and Cingular Wireless. Lower courts had dismissed the lawsuits, but the Supreme Court reversed the decision.

There have been conflicting studies done before which both prove and disprove harmful effects of mobile phone radiation. In 2000, the British government concluded in a study that cellphones do not cause cancer. The same year, the United States Food and Drug Administration said that there was no clear connection between cell phones and cancer. However another study in 2002 by the National Research Council in Italy reignited the debate by finding that analog cellphones did increase certain forms of cancer.