Last Updated on February 24, 2022
My first mobile phone was a bulky Motorola that was stored in a black bag and had a cigarette lighter plug for power. There was no shoving it into your pocket. That was in 1987 or so.
A study out of Scandinavia has been watching people who have used mobile phones, presumably the bulky kind and the newer, pocket-sized models of today, for three decades. The purpose was to learn whether there was a definitive link to the phones and brain tumors.
Mobile phone use really soared in the 1990s, but what didn’t, according to the study, was brain tumors. There was no sharp increase that coincided with mobile phone usage, which should be a relief for cell phone users.
But the news isn’t all good. There was a noted increase in brain tumors. Over the last 30 years, nearly 60,000 patients were diagnosed with brain tumors. That sounds like a lot, but it represents only a small increase — less than 1%.
The interesting, and disturbing thing, is that this minor increase in brain cancer was noted back in 1974, long before cell phones even existed.
So if we’re willing to accept this study’s findings, then we have a new mystery: what’s causing the brain tumors?
I try not to use my cell phone a great deal, and if I’m going to be on the phone for longer than a minute or so, then I pull out the earphones and talk that way. That, at least, avoids having the phone right up against my skull. When I can’t get to the earphones, I at least keep the phone an inch or so away from my face, since I’ve read elsewhere that the radiation from cell phones only goes about a centimeter towards the user.
Do you have any cell phone cancer worries? Do you make any conscious efforts to protect yourself from any such possibility?