COSMOS: a Long-Term Trial Geared to Assess the Health Risks of Cell Phone Use

Since the development of widespread cell phone usage there have been questions concerning safety. Cell phones emit radio waves, which are in the same non-ionizing class of radiation as x-rays. There is concern that the radio wave exposure associated with cell phones, all though small, may have health risks with long term cumulative exposure. There are few long term studies assessing potential health risks and available data from them is often conflicting (see reference 1 for more details).

The new long term COSMOS study that launched in late April 2010 is taking place in Europe to assess the long term health consequences of cell phone usage. The goal of the study is to determine if there is a link between various ailments and cell phone use. Specifically, headaches, sleep disorders, cancer, and other neurological perturbations.

The COSMOS study will take place over the course of the next 20-30 years in several European countries and is headed by the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Imperial College London. The study is funded by the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Program (MTHR), the UK department of health, and by industry, according to the COSMOS study website.

Study designers invited 2.4 million UK mobile phone users and currently have 9,776 participants enrolled. International contributors are estimated to follow another approximately 250,000 participants in the same time frame. An advantage of this trial, in comparison to others of the same nature, is that it is prospective. That is, they will not have to rely on patients memories for cell phone use as they would in a retrospective study.

The COSMOS trial is large and long enough that if cell phone use does have deleterious effects they should be detected. The trial is also large enough that if diseases are mobile phone related, there should be enough demographic data available to detect susceptibility factors. Whether those would include genetic, environmental, or a mixture of the two remains to be seen. Hopefully, the trial will rule out any deleterious effect of long term cell phone usage and provide a greater feeling of public safety.

References:

1. Cellular Telephone Use and Cancer Risk. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/cellphones. accessed 3/30/2010
2. COSMOS cohort study of mobile phone use and health. http://www.ukcosmos.org/index.html. accessed 3/30/2010