ARE WE COOKING OUR BRAINS?

Toying with a game of cell phone roulette

Daily Republic June 2, 2011

By Kelvin Wade

It’s amazing how fast we get attached to new things. Take cell phones, for instance. If I leave the house and forget my phone, I’m a wreck. I don’t feel right. It’s crazy because for most of my life, I didn’t have a cell phone and was fine. Now most of us couldn’t imagine not having one.

Now comes word from the World Health Organization that radiation from cell phones is “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” The WHO has placed cell phones in the same category as lead, chloroform and DDT.

This comes on the heels of a National Institutes of Health study that showed increased brain activity in the area nearest the cell phone antenna.

Perhaps the tinfoil-hat-wearing whack jobs one spots from time to time on the street in the City are onto something.

But how are we supposed to know if there really is a threat to our health? Do we take precautions while waiting for further study? When the first talk about possible harm from radiofrequency electromagnetic fields arose some years ago, I think most people dismissed it. We’ve had a love-hate relationship with this kind of science.

We’ve gone through this with eggs and cholesterol. At one point they had us believing eating eggs was like putting a grenade in your mouth and pulling the pin. Then came studies saying the cholesterol risk was overblown and eggs were our friends.

We’ve seen it in the butter-margarine debate. First, eating butter was like pouring sugar in a gas tank. Then they scared us away from margarine as if it was like eating bacon-wrapped, cheese-stuffed hot dogs. A 2010 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition says butter is not as bad as once suspected but margarine is better. What to do?

There’s the caffeine debate. For years we were told it was evil and would make our hearts explode. Then it was good. Then it was bad. The latest is from a study last month from the Harvard School of Public Health that says men who drink six or more cups of coffee a day can cut their prostate cancer risk by 60 percent. What will the next study say?

I’ve got a friend who, ever since the first stories of cell phone radiation potentially being harmful came out, has diligently avoided holding her handset to her head. If I call her, she will always ask me to hold on while she attaches her hands free headset (whether she’s on a cell phone or her cordless phone). Or she’ll talk on the speakerphone.

I’ve always chuckled to myself thinking, “You’re overweight, have high blood pressure and you smoke yet you’re worried about cell phone radiation.” But maybe she’ll have the last laugh.

And how long before we hear of fears of secondhand radiation?

So what are you going to do? Do you take your chances and play cell phone roulette? Are you going to always use a hands-free handset when talking on your cell phone? Are you going to hold your handset several millimeters from your ear as some cell phone manufacturers suggest? Or will you use your cell phone’s speaker function in order to talk? Or perhaps you will forego talking altogether and just text to be on the safe side.

I suspect the history of dueling studies and the fact we’re so attached to our cell phones will leave most of us willing to cook our brains in order to keep yakking. I guess we can’t say we weren’t warned. Peace.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

ADDITIONAL NOTES: I must admit that this isn't something that worries me terribly. Perhaps I'm being naive. But I just figure that there are so many other things that are much more likely to kill me. I have something specific in mind even. I respect radiation. It's a real thing.

Fortunately, I'm not a heavy cell phone call user. I probably text and use the internet more than I actually make calls. It will be interesting to see what the future studies show. It is important because parents are giving their 10 year old kids cell phones these days. What is their health going to be like when they're 50? We don't know the effects of cell phone use that long.

So...be cautious. I don't chuckle at my friend any more. She's going to read this and be mad at me!