WARNING: Holding a cellphone against your ear may be hazardous to your health. So may stuffing it in a pocket against your body, reports the New York Times’ Digital Domain. I’m paraphrasing here, says Randall Stross, but the legal departments of cellphone manufacturers slip a warning about holding the phone against your head or body into the fine print of the little slip that you toss aside when unpacking your phone. Apple, for example, doesn’t want iPhones to come closer than 5/8 of an inch; Research In Motion, BlackBerry’s manufacturer, is still more cautious: keep a distance of about an inch. The warnings may be missed by an awful lot of customers. The United States has 292 million wireless numbers in use, approaching one for every adult and child, according to C.T.I.A.-The Wireless Association, the cellphone industry’s primary trade group. It says that as of June, about a quarter of domestic households were wireless-only. If health issues arise from ordinary use of this hardware, it would affect not just many customers but also a huge industry. Our voice calls — we chat on our cellphones 2.26 trillion minutes annually, according to the C.T.I.A. — generate $109 billion for the wireless carriers…
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Study: Cell phone-brain cancer link inconclusive
Cell phone users worried about getting brain cancer aren’t off the hook yet, the Associated Press reports. A major international study into the link between cell phone use and two types of brain cancer has proved inconclusive, according to a report due to be published in a medical journal on May 18. A 10-year survey of almost 13,000 participants found most cell phone use didn’t increase the risk of developing meningioma–a common and frequently benign tumor–or glioma–a rarer but deadlier form of cancer. There were “suggestions” that using cell phones for more than 30 minutes each day could increase the risk of glioma, according to the study by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. But the authors added that “biases and error prevent a causal interpretation” that would directly blame radiation for the tumor. Longer call times appeared to pose a greater risk than the number of calls made, the study found…
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