Mobile communication potential cancer risk, says WHO

[auroraglacialis]

WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk - CNN.com

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.
...
"What microwave radiation does in most simplistic terms is similar to what happens to food in microwaves, essentially cooking the brain," Black [Dr. Keith Black, chairman of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles] said. "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."
...
"Children's skulls and scalps are thinner. So the radiation can penetrate deeper into the brain of children and young adults. Their cells are at a dividing faster rate, so the impact of radiation can be much larger." said Black of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Wonderful.... Maybe this is why peoples attention span has shrunken to the length of a trwitter feed and ADHS is on the rise. Nothing is proven yet, except the increase of some types of brain cancers though, but that evidently is enough to put cellphones alongside with some of the nasty things that also cause cancer.

[Advent]

Ha! My mum's been going on about this for years. It's only in the news now?

[auroraglacialis]

The WHO assessment is based on a review of various studies done previously. So it is not really new news in general. The interesting bit is that the evidence is growing to such an extent that the World Health Organization chose to put cell phones in that category. So that kind of makes it a bit more official than what people suspected or believed up to now, because I doubt the WHO would do this if it was only supported by scarce evidence and "fearmongering" or such.

[iron_jones]

Cellphones don't cause cancer.

[Vawm tsamsiyu]

I read that one of the study's they used just asked people with cancer how much they used cellphones, that's like asking obese people how much they watch tv on an led tv and saying that proves LEDs cause obesity. The phone/cancer studys I've heard of are so conflicting that theyre probably blaming cellphones for cancer cases that would gave happened anyway.

[auroraglacialis]

Here's the official press release:
http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/p...fs/pr208_E.pdf

The comparison with the TV - well if that study would show that people who are obese watch significantly more TV, there is a correlation then, especially if it is compared to control groups. There is no causality following from that (the people could also watch more TV because they are obese), but for cancer, the likelyhood that cancer causes people to more often use the cellphone is likely to be excluded.

The assertion is based on a review of numerous scientific (peer reviewed and published) studies. The conclusion also is not that "cell phones cause cancer", but that the likelyhood of them causing some types of cancer is high enough to put them in a different, "elevated risk" category. If they would have been proven to cause cancer, they'd be in an even higher risk category and probably this would be all over the news and people would seriously stop using them right now (and I would not have to write this post because you'd all already know of it )

[Vawm tsamsiyu]

I was just saying corralation doesn't prove causation

So how do they think microwaves cause cancer and phones cook your brain? Wouldn't they Just heat the cells by exciting water molecules in the cells? It might stimulate your brain but not cook it. And are they energetic enough to damage DNA , it's not like there's uranium in your phone emitting high energy radiation.

[Isard]

This again?


There's so much the WHO could be doing right now to help the world... And they're going after cellphones. I weep for the world. I truly do.

[Eltu]

Cellphones may or may not cause cancer, but they sure cause a whole lot of other problems.

Enough for me never to use one, anyway.

[iron_jones]

You have brain cancer... and you also own a cellphone eh? There MUST be a connection!

[applejuice]

Is there anything that won't give us cancer? At this pace, to just look at the stars in the night might give us cancer!
This is like coin flipping, it might be carcinogenic and it might be not.
PS: Is there any recognition to the cell phone on the number of lives it has saved?

[Fkeu'itan]

Hmm...

Well I guess we can all agree that having a piece of technology glued to the side of your face 24/7 isn't natural anyway, cancerous or not.

EDIT; That said, that's pretty much the case with me and my headphones, and that's probably not doing me any good either.

[Eltu]

Exactly.

[Human No More]

It depends on what type of microwave radiation. Nobody ever seems concerned about the huge amount put out by natural sources, for example. I find it funny that people can't even make their mind up about WHAT causes the problem (it used to be the claims of a heat source, but that subsequently disappeared).

Making a connection with headphones completely defies any and all logic.

[Tsyal Makto]

Originally Posted by Fkeu'itan

Hmm...

Well I guess we can all agree that having a piece of technology glued to the side of your face 24/7 isn't natural anyway, cancerous or not.

EDIT; That said, that's pretty much the case with me and my headphones, and that's probably not doing me any good either.

Same.

With all these cancer scare techniques, I just don't care anymore...