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Toronto's public health department recommends kids limit mobile use

by Chris Ziegler posted Jul 19th 2008 @ 10:42PM

In case it wasn't already obvious that kids under the age of eight should be using cellphones strictly for emergencies, here's another reason: Toronto's public health department says so. In what might be a first in all of Canada, the agency is officially laying down recommendations that tykes be restricted to emergency calls and teens talk on their phones for no more than ten minutes at a time (good luck with that one) due to growing evidence that prolonged use could lead to brain tumors and other health-related unpleasantness later in life. Moving up the governmental food chain, Health Canada still officially recommends no restrictions, so the endless confusion over cellphone safety continues as usual.

[Thanks, Thierry]

Cellphones are dangerous/not dangerous, you're better off smoking edition

by Darren Murph posted Apr 1st 2008 @ 7:36PM

You've heard just how dangerous holding that cellphone upside your noggin is, but this time, the research is really for real. Reportedly, an award-winning cancer expert (Dr. Vini Khurana) has concluded that mobile phones -- in the long run -- could end up killing far more Earthlings than smoking or asbestos ever could. As we've heard countless times before, this fellow is warning that heavy mobile users could end up with brain tumors that threaten their livelihood, and feels that a direct link between handset use and certain tumors will be "definitively proven" in the next decade. Additionally, he suggests that individuals avoid using the cancer generators whenever possible, and that governments and the mobile industry at large take "immediate steps" to reduce radiation exposure. You won't be laughing if he's right.

[Via Digital Lifestyles]

Cellphones are dangerous/not dangerous, cell division edition

by Chris Ziegler posted Sep 2nd 2007 @ 6:42PM

So apparently, virtually all existing official limits for radiation emitted by mobiles (FCC, we're looking at you) are based on the assumption that the dangerous effects of that radiation are caused by heating of the brain. Pretty big assumption, eh? A new study by Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science suggest that some "non-thermal" forces are at play, though, noting that chemicals involved in brain cell division were affected in tests on rats after just 10 minutes of exposure to cellphone radiation. Improper cell division goes hand in hand with cancer, so the finding is a rather alarming one. Of course, you know the drill: for every study that suggests phones are dangerous, we can certainly dredge up one that says they aren't -- just be forewarned that a cool brain isn't necessarily a healthy one.

[Via CNET]

Cellphones are dangerous/not dangerous, no glioma edition

by Sean Cooper posted Apr 2nd 2007 @ 3:20PM

If you are spending a good deal of your day and night fretting about brain cancer and mobile phones, you can rest easy knowing that current thinking (read: by current, we mean for the next 15 minutes when the next study comes out) leans toward cell phones not being associated with glioma, the most common type of brain tumor. The International Journal of Cancer reports that in a study of 1,521 glioma patients and 3,301 controls, 92 percent of glioma patients and 94 percent of controls reported using mobile phones. There is, however, some evidence pointing to increased risk of glioma in people who use cell phones on the same side of their head, though the results were of "borderline statistical significance." So, what can we take from all this? A new study is likely being written as you read this that will contradict these findings, switch up that handset once in a while -- you know, left to right and such, make a game of it -- and if you are really worried, check out a wired headset.

Long-term UK cancer study about to kick off, cellphones in peril again

by Darren Murph posted Jan 22nd 2007 @ 1:50PM

While we aren't claiming any prophetic abilities, it wasn't exactly hard to assume that just over a month after a thorough Danish study cleared cellphones of any wrongdoings associated with cancers and tumors, we've got a so-called expert lobbying for £3 million ($5.92 million) in funding to prove otherwise. Professor Lawrie Challis, who is in the final stages of negotiation with the Department of Health and the mobile phone industry for the aforementioned dough, seems to think that there's still a "hint of something" that could develop in long-term, heavy mobile users "after 10 years of use." Granted, he has literally books of research disproving this "hint," but as he references cases like asbestos and Hiroshima, he suggests that a study must be done now in order to prevent anything even more dramatic from cropping up in a decade or so. Reportedly, "over 200,000 volunteers, including long-term users, are to be monitored for at least five years to plot mobile phone use against any serious diseases they develop, including cancer, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's diseases." So it seems the circus begins again, and in the meantime, let's just all cross our re-paranoid fingers in hopes that nothing goes awry (and that a counter-test shoots it down) while this study unfolds.

[Via Textually]