Never-ending Debate: Do Cell Phones Harm Your Health?

There are issues which are constantly the matter of public debates and those related to health are the most controversial ones. Cell phone is one of the most praised and yet most disputed inventions of the twentieth century. Hardly anyone can imagine their life without this useful gadget nowadays but on the other hand its possible dangerous effects on human brain are constantly under the scope.

About cell phone radiation

The first problem that has to be dealt with when we are talking about cell phones is that of the radiation. The radiation which cell phones emit is electromagnetic radiation. Let’s boil this down to very simple language. Namely, every cell phone has a transmitter whose role is to encode the sound of voice into so-called continuous sine wave, which has the ability to travel through the space eventually reaching a receiver situated in the cell-phone tower. Those sine waves are sent to the receiver via antenna, in the form of radio waves. And now we have come to the point of our interest. Those radio waves used for sending the signal are composed of electromagnetic radiation and if we take into consideration the idea the proximity of the antenna to the head and brain, it is only logical to suspect that this whole apparatus is not so harmless.

Do Cell Phones Really Increase Brain Cancer Risk?

Since there is no doubt that cell phones emit electromagnetic radiation, people can’t help but worry about whether the use of cell phones actually increase brain cancer risk. On one side of the coin we have large cell phone manufacturers and telecommunication companies and they all claim that this whole thing is just exaggeration and that there is no reason to panic over something like that.  Of course, we shouldn’t jump to any conclusion and claim that cell phones are dangerous, but we should also remember that those companies have a large profit which they want to protect. But the other side of the coin we have numerous researches which are carried out in order to see if there is some kind of connection with electromagnetic radiation of the cell phones and brain cancer. According to an editorial by Lake Forest Hospital neurosurgeon, Dr Pawl, some of the recent studies of the long term effects of electromagnetic field (ELF) have suggested that there is a link between ELF exposure and brain cancer. But still, the researchers cannot provide us with the exact evidence of the case in which ELF has lead directly to brain cancer. A recent research carried out by a team of Swedish researchers has come to the result that there is an increased risk of brain cancer in cases when people use cell phones more than ten years. Moreover, they have come to the conclusion that there is also a high risk of acoustic nerve tumors in the same case. What is more striking is the fact that those tumors usually tend to appear on the side of the head where cell phone was frequently used. All those information, no matter how imprecise they are, should be enough for a moderate level of concern each time when we want to have a long conversation on the cell phone.

Could cell phone harm other vital organs in your body?

The fact that all those researches are all carried out in the span of ten years means that they still cannot give us complete and substantial information about the risks. Still, due to the fact that head and brain are most impacted by this radiation, simply because of the proximity, other vital body parts are neglected in researches, but this doesn’t mean that there are none of them. There is a catch when it comes to those researches. There are some indications that phone companies actually pay for some researches which are supposed to convince people that there is no risk in using cell phones. According to them the worst thing that can happen is that people who use cell phones excessively can only get irritated and that there are no other hazards for the health. This of course, is not the only risk and you should bear that in mind.

Using cell phones by children & in pregnancy

One of the most sensitive issues in this whole discussion is the risk for pregnant women and children. The scope of those researches is to see whether children are more susceptible to those health risks, but as for all other categories it is hard to come out with concrete results again because of the long-term effects which are not visible until those children are teenagers. It is also not very recommendable for pregnant women to use cell phones more that it is necessary as there are some speculations that ELF can bring about some genetic mutations and DNA damage. Even if those speculations about DNA damage prove to be wrong, according to a huge study carried out in Denmark children whose mothers used cell phones during pregnancy developed some behavioral problems, like hyperactivity. That is why kids and pregnant women should always use headphones in order to reduce the radiation.

Bottom line

The bottom-line of this whole discussion is that though there are no clear and straightforward results which would be able to state directly that using cell phones can definitely cause brain cancer and similar diseases, we should take the opposite claims advocated by telecommunication and cell phone companies that there is no risk for the health.