The hospital's Centre for Immunology will simulate mobile phone radiation and test its long-term, intermittent impact on human brain cells.
"This hasn't been done before," said Dr Peter French, who is involved in the research project. French pointed out that previous research has only tested short-term exposure to electromagnetic radiation through mobile phones on animals or cells.
The Centre is testing its hypothesis, published in June last year, that chronic long-term mobile phone use could lead to the activation of heat shock proteins and that the chronic stimulation of these proteins could cause cells to become cancerous.
"We honestly don't know what we'll find," French added. -The cells might become immune to long term intermittent exposure but we may find that the longer we go the worse the effects are on brain cells... clear evidence that is relevant to human health."
Although French concedes that that there is -no consistency" to previous research into the effects of mobile phone radiation, -the exposure chamber really does give us the accurate ability to simulate mobile phone radiatio," he said.
French also said that having its proposed -heat shock protein" theory at the centre of the research -gives us a very testable hypothesis".
Using an exposure chamber donated to the Centre by Telstra Research Laboratories, the brain cells will endure four exposures of one hour a day to radiation. The experimental stage of the trial will last three to six months, with the Centre hopeful of publishing the results by the end of 2002.
I owned a Motorola 3160 CDMA PHONE ,IN THE FIRST WEEK I spent 20 minutes one night on a call and COULD feel my ear burning , I could still feel burning the next morning,I rung Telsra who supplied the phone
they arranged to exchange it for one of the same make ,THE 2ND phone used to heat up after about 10 minutes but only about a quarter as intense as the 1st one ,I LOST HE PHONE AFTER ABOUT 9 MONTHS. I NOW HAVE A QUALCOM WHICH DOESN'T HEAT UP AT ALL.I THINK THE MAKE OF THE 1ST PHONE SHOULD BE LOOKED INTO.as both phones of that model heated up .Thank You