Three billion of us worldwide use them. One in five of us even sleeps next to one.

And being parted from it has been compared to the stress involved in moving house or splitting with one’s partner.

What is it? The mobile phone. And our love affair with this technology suggests that far from considering it dangerous, we do not think of it as a health hazard at all.

In fact we are more likely to get ill worrying that they don’t work, or that our children don’t have one. Anxiety over running out of battery life or credit, losing one’s handset or not having network coverage affects 53 per cent of mobile-phone users in the UK, according to a study by pollsters YouGov.

Nevertheless, since their introduction, there have been concerns about the possible impact of mobile phones on health, particularly whether they cause brain cancers or increase the risk of Alzheimer’s.

So could they prove to be the hi-tech equivalent of cigarettes – seemingly harmless for decades, but in reality a health time-bomb waiting to go off?

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