Arusha — There are times when one phone-call home could also mean one foot into the grave. That is when the call is done using those gadgets claimed to be made in China.

They are cheap, flashy and most of them provide the convenience of using two or three SIM cards at the same time. Other sets throw in the luxury of having at least one TV channel displayed onto their huge shiny screens.

But as far as the experts here are concerned, the increasingly popular "China-made" phones (available on the market at retail prices ranging from as low as Tsh. 50,000) can also speed up your journey to the grave probably at the same speed required to switch from one SIM card to another.

Cheap cell-phone handsets, believed to originate from China have been declared 'dangerous' and users buy them at their own risk.

The Head of Non-Ionizing Radiation at the Tanzania Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Mwijarubi M. Nyaruba said most of the increasingly popular dual-sim handsets and others that come from unknown manufacturers do not undergo safety tests as required by international regulations and therefore pose great danger to their users.

"Mobile handsets are our great concern at the moment because the commission does not have a laboratory to check or measure emissions and other radiations coming from the phones being imported and used in the country," stated the Atomic Energy expert.

According to Dr. Nyaruba, even genuine handsets may start producing harmful rays once tampered with; "If your phone breaks down and you take it for repairs, the people who profess to repair phones are usually not qualified and have no expertise to control the radiation which may run berserk once the gadget has been tampered with," he pointed out.

His advice is that one is better off trading a broken down phone for a new one instead of taking for repairs to unqualified technicians.

Exposure to harmful radiations from cell-phones, according to the expert, can lead to a variety of infections including cancer and other deadly maladies.

President Kikwete who last week toured the Tanzania Atomic Energy Commission new headquarters in Njiro also expressed concern over what he described as counterfeit handsets being made in Kariakoo area of Dar-es-salaam and branded with genuine trademarks such as Nokia, Samsung or Sony-Ericsson at the expense of less-informed gullible customers.

"It would have been easier if the phones used in the country were imported directly from manufacturers who can guarantee their safety but the imitated products are hard to control as they are made locally. The commission needs to find ways of addressing the problem," said the president.

Dr. Nyaruba appealed to President Jakaya Kikwete, who toured the TAEC facilities in Njiro area, in the outskirts of Arusha Municipality, to see ways in which the government could help the commission establish modern laboratories to address such issues.

Equipment used to determine radiation emissions at cell-phone transmitter towers as seen at TAEC headquarters in Njiro. The problem however is with some of the phones and not towers.