Just over a month ago, the World Health Organization shocked pretty much everyone with a scary message declaring cell phone radiation “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” There was no conclusive evidence then as there isn't now, but the journal of Environmental Health Perspectives argues:
"Although there remains some uncertainty, the trend in the accumulating evidence is increasingly against the hypothesis that mobile phone use can cause brain tumors in adults."
Now that's confusing. Who should you trust? Well, the latter study on one hand reevaluates previous research and stresses the fact that there is no conclusive evidence, nor there is an established biological mechanism explaining how could cell phone radio signals possibly damage the human brain. The WHO on the other exercises more caution. It did also note the possible carcinogenic effect of caffeine, working night shifts or even wrongly preserved vegetables.
But you might wonder – if phones caused cancer shouldn't we be suffering a pandemic right now? Similarly, however, atomic bomb survivors in Japan showed no signs of increased brain cancer until some forty years after the war. This proves that carcinogenic agents might remain inactive for many years and only trigger cancer development after decades. This uncertainty is exactly what lies under the WHO's scary summation as its aim seems to be prevention and caution.
Finally, Anthony Swerdlow of the British Institute of Cancer Research concludes:
"We are trying to say in plain English what we believe the relationship is. They were trying to classify the risk according to a pre-set classification system."
Feel free to also check out our in-depth article looking at how cell phones might affect your health and what previous studies have concluded.
source: Reuters and Huffington Post
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