Thursday, 5 December 2013

6 December, 2013

Mobile radiation causes no health risk: WHO

Mobile towers and mobile phone radiations have no health risks and do not cause cancer, a World Health Organisation (WHO) expert said on Thursday.
‘WHO studies have already proven that mobile phones do not affect human health. Cancer or brain tumour apart, it doesn’t cause even headaches or sleep disorder,’ said radiation expert Michael Repacholi, the first co-ordinator of WHO’s radiation and environmental health unit.
Talking at the launch of the book ‘Mobile Phones and Public Health – Myth and Reality’ here, Repacholi added: ‘A person absorbs five times more radio frequency (RF) from FM radio or television than the base station tower. Mobile tower radiation is lower compared to RF emissions from radio FM or television.’  
He also dismissed the views that mobile radiation levels higher than the prescribed limit can have ill effects on human health.
The book’s editor Ravi V.S.Prasad said: ‘Scientific studies from all over the world failed to prove any adverse effects from use of mobile phones and towers. Their energy emissions are one-thousandth of the energy from sunlight, and so can’t impact on health.’
Prasad also highlighted that the Indian standards are ten times more stringent than the already strict international norms, which in turn are one- fiftieth of the level at which there can be any impact on health.  
06.12.2013



High multiple births due to fertility treatments: Study

More than a third of twin births and more than three-quarters of triplets or higher-order births in the US are the result of assisted reproductive technologies, a new finding says.
The researchers from Brown University gathered data on multiple births from 1962 to 1966 before any medical fertility treatments were available and from 1971 through 2011, when data on in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures were available.
They found that the contribution of fertility treatments over the past 40 years is clear: Between 1971 and 2011, the proportion of US multiple births rose to 3.5 percent from 1.8 percent.
Even after adjusting for maternal age, the rate of twin births rose 1.6 times between 1971 and 2009, Xinhua quoted the researchers as saying.
However, the proportion of triplets or more related to fertility treatments has actually dropped from a peak of 84 percent in 1998 after IVF guidelines discouraging implantation of three or more embryos took effect that year, researchers at Brown University said on Wednesday.  
Some mothers and couples may hope for twins through fertility treatments, but more often multiple births are not desired, said senior author Eli Adashi, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Brown University.
‘We do have a real problem with way too many multiple births in the US with consequences to both mothers and babies,’ Adashi said in a statement.
While multiple births from IVF are a direct result of the number of embryos that are fertilized and intentionally implanted, non-IVF therapies involve medications that stimulate ovulation and follicle growth in ways that cannot be precisely predicted or controlled, the researchers said.
‘IVF is moving, in a sense, in the right direction and cleaning up its act, whereas the non-IVF technologies are at a minimum holding their own and possibly getting worse,’ Adashi said.
‘From a policy point of view what that means is that (we) need to focus on the non-IVF technologies, which really hasn’t been done in a concerted way because they weren’t considered all that relevant to this mix.’
The findings were published in the US journal New England Journal of Medicine.
06.12.2013



 

 

 

 

Having a dream is what keeps you alive. Overcoming the challenges make life worth living

Mary Tyler Moore



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