A study by researchers at the Universities of California, Los Angeles and Aarhus, Denmark, linking pregnant mothers’ cell phone usage to the birth of children with later behavioral problems, might raise unnecessary alarm, medical experts say.

The study, involving more than 13,000 Denmark mothers, found that mothers that used cell phones while pregnant were more likely to have children displaying attention problems, impulsivity or hyperactivity.

However, epidemiological experts including co-author of the study Dr. Jorn Olsen, chairman of epidemiology at University of California, LA, said the study’s results are not conclusive. He pointed exactly to a report in the British press with the headline “Warning: Using a Mobile Phone While Pregnant Can Seriously Damage Your Baby.”

“That’s clearly not what we wanted to suggest, and we think that there is no reason that pregnant women should be very alarmed at the findings we have,” Dr. Olsen said, as quoted by ABC News.

He also expressed his unpleasant surprise when reading about the study in newspapers when it was expected to be released in June.

“I think that a number of journalists broke the story on this and that they did not take all of the assumptions into consideration [when reporting it]. (We) only briefly mentioned the possibility that maternal cell phone use, especially postnatal use, could have adverse effects on child behavior in ways having nothing at all to do with radio frequency fields,” Olsen told ABC. “I don't think anyone has suggested that there is a causal mechanism.”

Referring to the study, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Peper Long says there isn’t any scientific evidence to indicate adverse health outcomes linked to exposure to radio frequency energy from cell phones. Therefore, she agrees that people need to be cautious when interpreting the most recent study.

The paper, in fact, is not the first to explore some of the possible health effects of cellular phones. No later than March, this year, one of the world’s top neurosurgeon, Vini Khurana released a paper saying that using mobile phones for 10 years could double the risk of brain cancer.

The paper was highly criticized by the Mobile Operators Association, which named it “a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual” that “does not present a balanced analysis.” In fact, the study “reaches opposite conclusions to the World Health Organization and more than 30 other independent expert scientific reviews,” the association said.

Whether use of cell phones while pregnant is harmful for babies remains to be confirmed by other studies. That is exactly what Dr. Olsen and his colleagues said when concluding their research.