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Is mobile phone use a sign you're a Bad Mother?

It comes to something when a major report says "Mobiles Bad For Infant Health!" - and the normal anti-radiation gang refuses to believe the report is kosher - but that's today's reality.

The report appeared in abstract form in an irreproachably legitimate source, the NCBI PubMed database. It said that more behaviour problems will be found in children whose mothers use mobiles when they are in the womb and also, kids whose mothers give them phones to take to pre-school:

Exposure to cell phones prenatally-and, to a lesser degree, postnatally-was associated with behavioral difficulties such as emotional and hyperactivity problems around the age of school entry.

Nobody can imagine any way this can be caused by the normal bugbear of anti-mast campaigners, "radiation" - and most of the usual banner-wavers confess themselves as baffled as the researchers seem to be.

As the report by eminent researchers Divan HA, Leeka heifets L, Obel C, and Olsen J. admits:

These associations may be noncausal and may be due to unmeasured confounding. If real, they would be of public health concern given the widespread use of this technology.

At Microwave News, which has closely reported the mast debate in the past, and which has reported on attempts to get Leeka Kheifets declared a biased observer likely to be in the pay of industry, the confusion of activists was illustrated:

Even some members of the EMF activist community are somewhat incredulous.

"The findings are remarkable and without obvious explanation," commented Graham Philips of Powerwatch, a U.K. group. "Direct RF exposure to the fetus from a mobile phone handset is basically non-existent."

What frustrates the mast campaigners is pretty simple: a baby in its mother's womb is pretty well protected from exposure to phone radiation. They have theories, and many of them are based around the "pulsing" of a standard GSM mobile - and all they've lacked to justify their campaign, is epidemiological evidence.

This looks exactly like the sort of valid statistical sample they've believed would turn up. The trouble is, nobody can think of any way the statistics can be related to radiation. As arch-radiation guru Alisdair Philips of PowerWatch in the UK wrote:

The paper discusses RF exposures to the unborn child but, realistically, these are likely to be vanishingly small from handset use by the mother. If the mother kept their handset in a waist belt pouch, then that could cause significant exposure, but it is mainly men who carry their handsets in trouser belt holsters. 85% of the mothers usually carried their phones in a handbag or case and 82% did not use a personal hands-free kit or earpiece so, when in use, the handset would be well away from the foetus.

That will make many researchers look to see social indicators, rather than physics.

For example, if careless mothers who are less likely to do good, middle-class things like stop drinking and smoking when they are pregnant also turn out to be the sort of people who aren't aware of (or concerned by) mobile radiation...

In short, if you spend all day on the phone instead of obsessing about your child, you must be a Bad Mother.