A report in a U.S. journal says there are possible biological hazards and risks of genetic damage from unchecked proliferation of wireless technologies.

A panel of international scientists writing in the journal Reviews of Environmental Health is urging world governments to set greatly reduced exposure limits for electromagnetic radiation from power line and telecommunications technologies including cellphones, ElectromagneticHealth.org reported Wednesday.

In the United States, there have been calls in Congress for a U.S. cellphone research program, warning labels on cellphones and an update of antiquated radiation exposure standards, but no action has been taken yet, scientists say.

"Current United States and ICNIRP (International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection) standards for radiofrequency and microwave radiation from wireless technologies are entirely inadequate," panel chairman Olle Johansson of the Karolinska Institutet medical university in Stockholm said. "They never were intended to address the kind of exposures from wireless devices that now affect over 4 billion people."

The current accepted measure of radiation risk, the specific absorption rate or SAR, is inadequate, the panel said.

There is abundant evidence that biological effects are occurring at exposures "many orders of magnitude" below existing public safety standards, it said.

"We are already seeing increases in health problems such as cancer and neurobehavioral impairments, even though these wireless technologies are fairly new in the last decades or so for the general public," said panel member Elihu Richter, retired professor of occupational and environmental medicine at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.