Do Cell Phones Cause Brain Cancer?

When I was a kid my uncle used to take me to the ballpark to watch the St. Louis Cardinals play. I always took along my little transistor radio to listen to Harry Carey and Jack Buck broadcast the game. Baseball just wasn't baseball in St. Louis without listening to them.

I wonder, by holding the tiny little transistor radio up to my ear to hear the game over the noise of the crowd, was I exposing myself to brain cancer?

Then I grew up and got my first cell phone. Back then the cell phones were big and bulky and came with a handle that looked like a regular phone and a big, heavy base that it plugged into.

The base was then plugged into the power outlet in the car. The base also had the antenna to the phone. So, essentially the antenna, (the part that receives the radio waves), was isolated from the part of the phone that you held to your head. This eliminated any chance of the electromagnetic waves entering your brain and causing cancer.

Then the cell phones got smaller and smaller and eventually out came the flip phone. They were a lot smaller and you held them up to your head to hear the person on the other line. Researchers then came out with the idea that since radio waves were radiation after all, (actually microwaves), holding the phone to your head might expose you to a greater risk.

Actually microwaves ovens were invented when a worker stood too close to a transmitter in a lab and the chocolate candy bar in his pocket melted.

Now, after a few years of studying the potential problem, scientists are still uncertain whether long-term cell phone usage can cause cancer. According to CNN, there have been eight studies that suggest that there may be a link between cell phone usage and brain tumors, but none of them so far have been conclusive.

One of the results that suggests that there may be a link is that people developed tumors on the side of their head that they held the cell phones on. But some of the other, less controlled studies suggest that cell phone usage might actually help stave off brain cancer. No one knows why though.

So what can we do? Maybe use the speaker on your cell phone more often. Or, you can use an earplug. I'm not so certain about the very popular Blue Ray attachments because they also broadcast to a receiver in your ear.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/11/10/cell.phones.cancer.tumors/index.html