Mobile Phones - Caution!!!

Did you see the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's announcement yesterday (http://www.fda.gov/cellphones/braincancer040606.html) that it will review wireless phone safety following a recently published study that raises concerns about a heightened risk of brain cancer?

Apparently, researchers at the Swedish National Institute for Working Life compared data from 2,200 cancer patients and an equal number of healthy patients. Those who used wireless phones intensively had a 240 percent increased risk of a cancerous tumor on the side of the head where they used their phone, they reported. Their results, published in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, defined heavy use of wireless phones as 2,000 or more hours, or about one hour per day for 10 years. The findings contradict a number of earlier studies and are "difficult to interpret," the FDA said in comments posted on its Web site. Still, the agency said it "plans to convene a meeting in the near future to evaluate research conducted to date in this area and identify gaps in knowledge that warrant additional research."

It also will continue to monitor studies for possible health problems stemming from exposure to radio frequency energy.

What is not clear in all this is what counts as "use" of mobile phones and what as "exposure to radio frequency energy".

Just as being in the vicinity of smokers is at least as dangerous as "actively smoking" yourself, will it turn out that being in the vicinity of radio energy is as harmful as actually using mobile phones yourself?

In any case, if there is a clear link between radio energy and cancer, that will provide at least one explanation for the exponential increase in cancer worldwide (which the political industry and the health industry constantly reassures is simply due to increased surveillance and better identification, but which I do not believe on the basis of the facts that are publicly available).

If you are a user of mobile phones, you might want to slacken off just a bit, at least.

And if you invest in mobile telephony related companies, you might want to consider the huge payments that were made by tobacco companies to those who suffered from cancer as a result.

Not comforting thoughts, either for phone users or for those investing in mobile telephony - though I hope that, if there is a link, humanity will also find ways of countering the carcinogenic tendencies and/or shielding us from them (mobile telephony is too useful simply to dump, I should have thought?).

Mobile Phones, Food and Drug Administration, wireless phone, safety, health, published, study, cancer, Swedish National Institute for Working Life, data, tumor, International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, smoking,
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