I’ve been following the story about the relationship between cell phones and brain cancer for some time now, and I have often wondered how widely the story is getting out. There IS a relationship, it’s become quite evident, and the long-term implications are serious.

The Environmental Working Group has  released a free downloadable report in PDF format, titled Cell Phone Radiation: Science Review on Cancer Risks and Children’s Health. It’s at http://www.ewg.org/cellphoneradiation/fullreport

I just read it… well, skimmed it. It’s not exactly light reading, but the first sections summarize the findings.  Here is an example of the writing, where I bolded the main point:

Strikingly, the field of research on the health effects of cell phone use has exhibited the signature pattern of a so-called “funding effect,” a biased outcome due to source of funding, observed in studies funded by tobacco companies or the manufacturers of industrial chemicals such as the endocrine disrupting plasticizer BPA (vom Saal 2005). In 2001, the U.S. Government Accountability Office voiced a strong concern about the reliability of results from industry-funded studies conducted without government oversight (GAO 2001). A recent systematic review of the source of funding and results of studies of health effects of cell phone use indicated that studies funded by the cell phone industry were ten times more likely to report no adverse effects compared to studies funded by public agencies or charities (Huss 2007; Huss 2008). Thus, some of the heterogeneity in the earlier literature could be related to the source of funding, whereby research sponsors could influence the design of the study, the nature of the exposure, and the type of outcome assessed.

The Environmental Working Group also offers a guide to reducing cell phone radiation exposure, which it seems you can read on the site or download.

I already do one of their recommendations– when I’m home, I always use the speakerphone on my cell phone, holding the device away from my body.  On the purple sidebar on the right side of the website, one of the choices is Easy Ways to Take Action, and that takes you to a page where you can email the FCC and the FDA. I did that, and suggest that you do too.

Another website that tracks the cell phone – cancer news is www.mercola.com — just type cell phone in their search box. I get their daily email newsletter, which covers health and other topics.

I’m sure cell phones are not going to disappear but I for one am using mine way less now!