Heavy Cell Phone Use Can Quadruple
Your Risk of Deadly Brain Cancer
January 06, 2015
Story
at-a-glance
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Those who use their cell phones the most are twice
as likely to develop lethal brain cancer (glioma)
compared to those whose exposure is minimal
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Those who have used either a cell phone or cordless
house phone for more than 25 years have triple the
risk of glioma, compared to those who have used them
for less than one year
By Dr. Mercola
No one wants to hear that something as “indispensable” as
your cell phone might cause grave harm to your health, but
that’s exactly what mounting evidence tells us we’re faced with.
Wireless phones and other gadgets have the potential to cause
all sorts of health problems, from headaches to brain tumors.
The link between brain cancer and cell phone use has been a
particularly persistent one, and mounting research has only made
this association stronger...
As mentioned in the featured video, previous research has
shown that those who begin using cell phones heavily before age
20 have four to five times more
brain cancer by their late 20s, compared to those whose
exposure is minimal.
In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer
(IARC), an arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared
cell phones a Class B Carcinogen, meaning a “possible
cancer-causing agent,” based on the available research.
This places cell phones in the same category as diesel engine
exhaust, some pesticides, and some heavy metals. The expert
panel ruled that there was “some evidence” that regular cell
phone use increased the risk of two types of tumors – brain
tumors (gliomas) and acoustic neuromas.
When you consider the fact that your body is bioelectric,
it’s easier to understand how and why biological damage from
wireless phones might occur.1
For starters, your body uses electrons to communicate, and
inside every cell are mitochondria, the “power plants” of the
cell, and these mitochondria can be adversely impacted by
electromagnetic fields, resulting in cellular dysfunction. Other
mechanisms of harm have also been discovered in recent years.
Wireless Phone Use Increases Risk of Malignant Brain Tumor
The latest analysis,2,
3 published online ahead of print in October, was
performed by Dr. Lennart Hardell, a professor of oncology at
University of Örebro in Sweden, and statistician Michael
Carlberg from the same University.
The pair looked at data from two previous case-controlled
studies on Swedish patients diagnosed with malignant brain
tumors during the periods of 1997-2003 and 2007-2009.
The patients were between the ages of 18 and 80 years old at
the time of their diagnosis. Cell phone use was ascertained via
questionnaires. (Use of a hands-free device counted as
non-exposure.) In all, nearly 1,500 brain cancer patients were
included, along with 3,530 cancer-free controls.
Using regression analysis, adjusted for gender, age, year of
diagnosis, and socioeconomic index, the odds of developing a
malignant and highly lethal brain cancer called glioma rose
concurrently with increased cell phone use.
The more hours spent with a cell phone pressed to their ear,
and the more years they’d spent using a mobile phone, the higher
the odds were.
- Those who logged the most amount of hours on their cell
phones were twice as likely to develop glioma compared to
those who used them the least
- Those who used either a cell phone or cordless house
phone for more than 25 years had triple the risk of glioma,
compared to those who had used wireless telephones for less
than one year
To put this risk ratio into some perspective, just over five
people out of 100,000 were diagnosed with malignant brain cancer
between 1995 and 2002. If that rate triples, the odds of
developing a malignant brain tumor rise to about 16 out of
100,000.
But, there are also signs that technology is progressively
getting more harmful—not less so... As noted in the
featured article:4
“The case control studies covered periods during
which phone technologies had changed considerably. It
started with first generation analogue phones that had an
output power of 1 W at about 900 MHz.
The 2nd generation GSM (Global System for Mobile
Communication) phones (2G) with either 900 or 1800 MHz
frequency had pulsed output power averaging tens of mW.
The 3rd generation (3G) phones UMTS (Universal Mobile
Telecommunication System) are more amplitude modulated than
pulsed, and typically use a broad frequency band (5 MHz
width) from 700-3 590 MHz on a worldwide basis, and from
900-2 170 MHz in Europe with output power of the order of
tens of μW.”
The findings show that 3G phones may cause more harm
than earlier versions, raising the risk of brain cancer
four-fold. It also appears to have shorter latency
period—just five to 10 years, compared to about 25 years for
earlier mobile phone versions.
Proposed Mechanisms of Harm
One mechanism of harm, published in 2010,5
explains how electromagnetic fields damage your cells and DNA by
inducing a cellular stress response. The research was conducted
by Dr. Martin Blank,6
PhD, a former Associate Professor at Columbia University in the
department of physiology and cellular biophysics, and past
president of the Bioelectromagnetics Society.
He gave an
informative speech at the November 18, 2010 Commonwealth
Club of California program, "The Health Effects of
Electromagnetic Fields," co-sponsored by
ElectromagneticHealth.org.
In his lecture, Dr. Blank explained that DNA, with its “coil
of coils” structure, is very vulnerable to electromagnetic
fields. It possesses the same structural characteristics of a
fractal antenna (electronic conduction and self-symmetry), and
these two properties allow for greater reactivity of DNA to
electromagnetic fields than other tissues.
Moreover, no heat is required for this DNA damage to occur.
Dr. Blank believes the potential harm of wireless technologies
can be significant, and that there’s plenty of peer-reviewed
research to back up such suspicions.
A review of 11 long-term epidemiologic studies published in
the journal Surgical Neurology7
in 2009 revealed that using a cell phone for 10 years or longer
approximately doubles your risk of being diagnosed with a brain
tumor on the same side of the head where the cell phone is
typically held. Both Dr. Hardell and Carlberg were involved in
that study as well, and these findings are very similar to the
findings in their latest review, discussed earlier.
Another important study, funded by the US government, was
published in JAMA8,
9 in 2011. Using a specialized brain scanner capable
of detecting alterations in glucose, the researchers determined
that cell phone radiation triggers your brain cells to
metabolize glucose at an increased rate. Glucose metabolism
equates to cell activation, so the findings indicate that
radiation from your cell phone has a well-defined measureable
influence on your brain. Essentially, each time you put a cell
phone up to your ear, you’re artificially activating your
brain cells. While that much is clear, it’s still unknown
whether this excess glucose production is harmful, or can cause
a cascade of problems down the line.
Common-Sense Guidelines to Protect Your and Your Family’s Health
It’s important to note that researchers are in general
agreement that there’s a latency period of about 10 years or
more before the damage shows up, which places children at
greatest risk—a risk that is potentially exacerbated with more
modern 3G technologies, which appear to be even more harmful
than earlier versions.
From my perspective, the evidence clearly indicates that we
need to invoke the precautionary principle with regards to cell
phone use, as well as other wireless technologies. Until the
industry starts taking this matter seriously, the responsibility
to keep children safe falls on the parents. To minimize the risk
to your brain, and that of your child, pay heed to the following
advice:
- Don’t let your child use a cell phone.
Barring a life-threatening emergency, children should not
use a cell phone, or a wireless device of any type. Children
are far more vulnerable to cell phone radiation than adults,
because of their thinner skull bones.
- Keep your cell phone use to a minimum.
Turn your cell phone off more often. Reserve it for
emergencies or important matters. As long as your cell phone
is on, it emits radiation intermittently, even when you are
not actually making a call. Use a land line at home and at
work.
- Reduce or eliminate your use of other wireless
devices. Just as with cell phones, it is important
to ask yourself whether or not you really need to use them
every single time. If you must use a portable home phone,
use the older kind that operates at 900 MHz. They are no
safer during calls, but at least some of them do not
broadcast constantly even when no call is being made. Note
the only way to truly be sure if there is an exposure from
your cordless phone is to measure with an electrosmog meter,
and it must be one that goes up to the frequency of your
portable phone (so old meters won’t help much). As many
portable phones are 5.8 Gigahertz, we recommend you look for
RF meters that go up to 8 Gigahertz.
You can find RF meters at
www.EMFSafetyStore.com. Even without an RF meter, you
can be fairly certain your portable phone is problematic if
the technology is labeled DECT, or digitally enhanced
cordless technology. Alternatively, you can be very careful
with the base station placement as that causes the bulk of
the problem since it transmits signals 24/7, even when you
aren't talking. If you can keep the base station at least
three rooms away from where you spend most of your time, and
especially your bedroom, they may not be as damaging to your
health. Ideally it would be helpful to turn off or
disconnect your base station every night before you go to
bed.
- Limit cell phone use to areas with excellent
reception. The weaker the reception, the more power
your phone must use to transmit, and the more power it uses,
the more radiation it emits, and the deeper the dangerous
radio waves penetrate into your body. Ideally, you should
only use your phone with full bars and good reception.
- Avoid carrying your cell phone on your body, and
do not sleep with it below your pillow or near your head.
Ideally, put it in your purse or carrying bag. Placing a
cell phone in your bra or in a shirt pocket over your
heart is asking for trouble, as is placing it in a man's
pocket if he seeks to preserve his fertility. The most
dangerous place to be, in terms of radiation exposure, is
within about six inches of the emitting antenna. You do not
want any part of your body within that area while the phone
is on.
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Don't assume one cell phone is safer than another.There's
no such thing as a "safe" cell phone.
- Respect others; many are highly sensitive to
EMF. Some people who have become sensitive can feel
the effects of others' cell phones in the same room, even
when it is on but not being used. If you are in a meeting,
on public transportation, in a courtroom or other public
places, such as a doctor's office, keep your cell phone
turned off out of consideration for the “secondhand
radiation” effects. Children are also more vulnerable, so
please avoid using your cell phone near children.
- Use a well-shielded wired headset:
Wired headsets will certainly allow you to keep the cell
phone farther away from your body. However, if a wired
headset is not well-shielded -- and most of them are not --
the wire itself can act as an antenna attracting and
transmitting radiation directly to your brain. So make sure
the wire used to transmit the signal to your ear is
shielded. One of the best kinds of headsets use a
combination of shielded wire and air-tube. These operate
like a stethoscope, transmitting the sound to your head as
an actual sound wave; although there are wires that still
must be shielded, there is no wire that goes all the way up
to your head.
Copyright 1997- 2015 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
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