Cell Phone Kills Brain Cells

Everyone has been questioning for many years, do cell phones kill brain cell phones? who is to know? well i found this great article about it. but everyone who is everyone has a cellphone. Cell phones are more used than house phones, believe it or not! As a long time cell phone user, i'd like to know what's up with the situation!Fears of brain cancer from cell phone usage gained currency with a few high profile lawsuits alleging a connection. In one suit against Motorola and several major cell phone carriers a Maryland neurologist claimed that cell phone use had caused his brain cancer. The plaintiff's attorneys presented research by a Swedish cancer researcher indicating a possible connection. But defense attorneys had plenty of research too, and in September 2002, the suit was thrown out of court.

Still, people are worried. The reason is that cell phones produce electromagnetic radiation which penetrates the brain a short distance from the phone's antenna. But electromagnetic radiation from cell phones is different from the ionizing radiation from, say, an X-ray or a hunk of uranium, which damages DNA and is clearly linked to cancer.

The radiation from cell phones falls in a frequency range somewhere between what you're exposed to when you stand next to your television and what comes out of a leaky microwave oven. It could, theoretically, damage brain cells by heating them. But the heat from cell phones is slight. It isn't like your brain is being baked.

"The research is unequivocal that this type of radiation doesn't cause cancer. But it hits a bunch of emotionally resonant buttons, so we're all afraid of it," said David Ropeik, director of risk communications at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.

If you take a call in the waiting room at a hospital, could you be causing someone to go to code blue on the floor above you?

The possibility that anything really awful could happen is small, according to the limited research that's been done. In a study released in January 2001, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., tested cell phones with hospital devices that monitor heart and lung activity. The phones did cause interference, they found, but in most cases the interference would not have been cause for concern.

These tests were done "in vitro" said Dr. David Hayes, one of the study's authors, meaning patients weren't connected to the machines. Tests still need to be done with patients actually connected to the devices.

"Until that's done we really need the [no cell phone] signs up," he said.

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