Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Are there dangers to cell phone use?

I just came across this article about the possible dangers of cell phone use:

"Twenty-eight years ago, Arthur Firstenberg had a dental X-ray. He's been on the run ever since.

That X-ray, he says, made him excruciatingly sensitive to electromagnetic fields—the low-level radiation that emanates from power lines, microwaves, and, most vexingly, cell phones. Now 58, Firstenberg has spent more than a decade crisscrossing the country, trying to find the last unwireless spot in America. When cell phone towers came to New York City, he moved upstate. Then he headed to Mendocino, California. These days, he lives out of his '87 Nissan station wagon in Santa Fe; a house is too risky. "Your neighbor could get wifi, and then you have to leave and hunt for a new home."

At first, I was inclined to chalk Firstenberg's symptoms up to plain old paranoia. After all, the World Health Organization's website says "no study [on cell phone radiation] has shown adverse health effects at exposure levels below international guideline limits." But doctors and scientists are starting to scrutinize how invisible electromagnetic fields affect human health, especially when it comes to cell phones, one of the most ubiquitous sources of microwave radiation. In 2006, a Swedish study reported that 85 of 905 brain tumor patients had used mobile phones heavily for 10 years or more, and most of their tumors occurred on the side of their head where they usually held their phones. In March, after... (Continued here)

What do you think?

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