(CNN) – Radiation from cell phones can possibly cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization. The agency now lists mobile phone use in the same “carcinogenic hazard” category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform.
Before its announcement Tuesday, WHO had assured consumers that no adverse health effects had been established. A team of 31 scientists from 14 countries, including the United States, made the decision after reviewing peer-reviewed studies on cell phone safety. The team found enough evidence to categorize personal exposure as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”
What that means is that right now there haven’t been enough long-term studies conducted to make a clear conclusion if radiation from cell phones are safe, but there is enough data showing a possible connection that consumers should be alerted. “The biggest problem we have is that we know most environmental factors take several decades of exposure before we really see the consequences,” said Dr. Keith Black, chairman of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “What microwave radiation does in most simplistic terms is similar to what happens to food in microwaves, essentially cooking the brain. So in addition to leading to a development of cancer and tumors, there could be a whole host of other effects like cognitive memory function, since the memory temporal lobes are where we hold our cell phones.”
The voices urging caution to consumers have gotten louder in recent years. Results from the largest international study on cell phones and cancer was released in 2010. It showed participants in the study who used a cell phones for 10 years or more had doubled the rate of brain glioma, a type of tumor. To date, there have been no long-term studies on the effects of cell phone usage among children.
Too late, I think that horse has already left the barn. The industry is too big…maybe too big to fail. Perhaps you can keep these out of the hands of the kiddies, at least temporarily. Of course, you will be most unpopular amongst the wee folk.
The whole thing is hugely overblown. Coffee is in the same “cancer risk” category. There’s no known mechanism for causing damage to cells. About all the fields can do is cause very weak heating. Standing in the sun does a LOT more.
Obviously they should minimize transmit power, it’s only sensible, but the switch to digital phones already did that.
I don’t use the cell phone much, but I still worry about my DNA being busted in the wrong place by cosmic ray particles raining down from Andromeda.
Could be a plot by God to mutate us all back to being monkeys again. You never know.
Thinking of getting a lead sombrero, just in case.
#42 Please, make it an Urban Lead Sombrero
BTW, I love the image they use as support were a 5 years old subject has the same head size as an adult.
I sure hope that’s not the case because they’d be using a numerical model to get the body surface & the dose and real coverage rather than having unique phantoms for each case.
Not that expensive to do and real lazy from them because it might have been just data interpolation rather than actual results.
It’s pretty obvious from the pictures that the older you get the denser your head. They don’t seem to have counted that fact at all. Maybe the cancer is from Global Warming (TM) instead of cell phones.