Is your head a hard boiled egg?
I once went to a conference where a physician put a cell phone next to a raw egg on a table on stage. By the end of the day, the egg was hard boiled and he ate it.
The largest cell phone study to date known as Interphone linked brain cancer risk to cell phone use. This research was done by the peer reviewed International Agency on Cancer – a trusted UN watchdog group. After studying brain cancer risk in 5,100 people in 13 countries, including the US, Canada, Japan, Germany and Israel from 2000 to 2005, researchers found that use of only 1/2 hour per day for 10 years indicated that there was a suggestion of an elevated risk of getting glioma (the same type that Ted Kennedy died from).
According to the National Cancer Institute, it is estimated that 12,920 Americans died from brain cancer and 22,070 new cases were diagnosed in 2009. Brain cancer incidence and death rates have not increased in the past decade. Rates are highest in caucasians compared to any other ethnic group and men have a higher chance of dying from brain cancer than women.
In this study, people who used their phone only 30 minutes per day over 10 years had a 40 percent higher risk of glioma, compared to people who never used the phones. They also had double the risk of developing tumors on the same side of their heads where they typically held their phones. The authors, however, say that the finding was not strong enough to link cell phones to brain cancer. Why? There are several reasons for the inconclusive evidence:
1) Cell phone use is assessed through questionaires and reporting may not always be reliable especially in people with brain tumors.
2) Cell phone technology keeps changing and possibly the later versions emit lower frequencies of radiation. Hands-free wireless technology likely alters exposure as well. The use of hands-free wireless technology is increasing and may alter cell phone radiation energy exposure.
3) Just like cigarette smoking and lung cancer, it may take more than a decade for exposure to the radiation of cell phones to cause bran cancer. And it is very difficult to track the cumulative amount of exposure someone has encountered over time.
4) Studies have not been done in people who spend alot of time on their cell phones. Being on the phone for 30 minutes per day every day was considered heavy use in this study.
What can you do? Best bet right now is to use hand-free technology and I would add don’t even have the phone sitting on your lap near your organs. Keep it as far away from you as possible. What do you think – is your head a hard boiled egg?
References:
A Snapshot of Brain and Central Nervous System Cancers. National Cancer Institute. Last updated September 2008. Accessed online at http://planning.cancer.gov/disease/Brain-Snapshot.pdf on 6/5/10.
Cardis E, et al. Brain tumour risk in relation to mobile telephone use: results of the INTERPHONE international study. International Journal of Epidemiology. 2010: 1-20.
That is horrifying! But keep ‘em coming. I have always been suspect of the cell.
Also, if my head is going to be cooked like an egg, I’d prefer my brain over easy.
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