Recent studies conducted on the possible harmful effects of mobile radio wave radiations have given an all clear to using mobile phones without any tension. The German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said German Mobile Telecommunications Research Programme (DMF) conducted more than 50 studies from 2002-2008 in co-ordination with the Berlin-based Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) and found no substantial proof to conclude that mobile phones and transmission towers lead to any kind of health risk.

Despite the studies' all clear signal, skeptics feel that though mobile telephony may be safe as far as we know, but we still do not know everything.

"What concerns me is that we know little about the effects on children and juveniles," said Rolf Buschmann, an environmental expert at the North Rhine-Westphalia Consumer Centre in Dusseldorf. Another area of concern is that there are no suitable scientific models at present for studies involving children. Also the effects of long-term mobile phone use of 10 years or more have not been sufficiently studied either as the technology is still young.

Bernd Rainer Mueller, an engineer and measurement technology specialist for the Berlin-based environmental protection organization BUND, feels that mobile-phone usage will increase in the years ahead and this is reason enough to demand lower legal limits for the electromagnetic radiation caused by mobile telephony."I'm afraid that otherwise half the population will have health problems at some point," he said.

The BfS sees the need for more research on long-term mobile-phone use as well as on the effects of children and juveniles and its advice to consumers is to limit mobile phone usage to as little as possible, to buy low-radiation models, and to make sure that conditions for reception are good.