"Baby Onboard: Please switch off cellphone"

Cellphone radiation had been suggested as a possible cause for the disappearance of the honeybee. And the internet is full of unsubstantiated rumors about gas station fires being sparked off by cellphones or eggs being boiled by cellphone radiation.

But this one is more real. Could the recent spurt in behavioral disorders in young kids be related to cellphone usage by them or their mothers during pregnancy ?

In a study, which is to be published in the July issue of the journal Epidemiology, scientists from universities of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Aarhus, Denmark surveyed the mothers of 13,159 children born in Denmark in the late 1990s about their use of the phones during pregnancy, and their children's use of handsets and behaviour up to the age of seven. The findings show that women who used mobile phones were 54% more likely to have children with behavioural problems, and that the likelihood increased with the amount of potential exposure to the radiation, the Independent daily of Britain said.

Study also found found that using mobile phones even two or three times daily was sufficient to increase the risk of their babies developing hyperactivity and difficulties with conduct, emotions and relationships. The health implications likelihood is even greater if the children themselves used the phones before the age of seven.

The Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, the official Russian radiation watchdog body, holds that the peril cellphones pose "is not much lower than the risk to children's health from tobacco or alcohol".

Scary stuff.......However, the researchers warned that the results "should be interpreted with caution" and need to be verified by further studies.

Do you suffer from "nomophobia" ?

"nomophobia" : the fear of being out of mobile phone contact.

Researchers in Britain have carried out a study and found that nomophobia is plaguing our 24/7 life -- running out of battery or credit, losing one's handset and not having network coverage "affects 53 per cent of mobile users". "Being phoneless and panicked is a symptom of our 24/7 culture," Stewart Fox-Mills, the Head of Telephony at the Post Office, which commissioned the YouGov survey, was quoted by The Independent newspaper as saying. According to the survey, men suffer more than women, with 48 per cent of females and 58 per cent of males admitting to feelings of anxiety.

Looks like this should be a big fear amongst Rochesterians too esp. during winter hoping that our phones don't die out as we commute to work in a winter storm... anybody got any interesting Nomophobic stories to share ?