What do brain surgeons know about cellphone safety that the rest of us don’t? New York Times has carried an article on June 3, in which experts have revived the debate over cellphones and cancer. Here is an excerpt from the article:“Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cellphones next to their ears. “I think the safe practice,” said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, “is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away from your brain.”
Dr. Vini Khurana, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Australian National University who is an outspoken critic of cellphones, said: “I use it on the speaker-phone mode. I do not hold it to my ear.” And CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital, said that like Dr. Black he used an earpiece.
Along with Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s recent diagnosis of a glioma, a type of tumor that critics have long associated with cellphone use, the doctors’ remarks have helped reignite a long-simmering debate about cellphones and cancer.
Last year, The American Journal of Epidemiology published data from Israel finding a 58 percent higher risk of parotid gland tumors among heavy cellphone users. Also last year, a Swedish analysis of 16 studies in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine showed a doubling of risk for acoustic neuroma and glioma after 10 years of heavy cellphone use.
Some doctors say the real concern is not older cellphone users, who began using phones as adults, but children who are beginning to use phones today and face a lifetime of exposure.”
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Even the Ministry of Communications in India has admitted that the electromagnetic waves emitted from mobile phones can seriously damage the tissues of the users' brain. In a set of the guidelines, the government suggested measures like limited usage of mobile phones by children, pregnant women and people suffering from heart ailments. In fact, the government has already asked service providers and makers to avoid promotional advertisements showing vulnerable segments like children and pregnant women using cell phones.
The guidelines say that mobile phones/radio terminals radiate radio frequency energy that heats up the tissues which may be possibly harmful to human health.
During use, mobile phones are usually kept closer to the ear which is very near to the brain giving rise to fears that continuous use of mobile phone for longer duration may damage some brain tissues.
The report advises people to use hands-free, if longer use is unavoidable and recommends that children below 16 should be discouraged from using cell phones as the tissues of children are tender and are likely to be more affected.
The onus is now on us to curtail the mobile phone usage.
Avinash Fotedar, Mumbai
The discussion about the association of cellphones and risk of cancer is surfacing again and again. Today, according to an Associate Press report, the head of a prominent cancer research institute has warned his faculty and staff to limit cellphone use because of a possible cancer risk.
Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, the director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, notes that while the evidence about a cellphone-cancer link remains unclear, people should take precautions, particularly for children.
“Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn’t wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later,” Dr. Herberman told The Associated Press.
Earlier this year, three prominent brain surgeons raised similar concerns while speaking on “The Larry King Show.” Their concerns were largely based on observational studies that showed only an association between cellphone use and cancer, not a causal relationship. The most important of these studies is called Interphone, a vast research effort in 13 countries, including Canada, Israel and several in Europe.
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