As we walk through the campus or town we see many people on their mobile phones, texting and talking. Even in classes some students are relentless to put their cell phone away. People are constantly hiding behind their phones and it is becoming a problem. Even when being hired for jobs some people lack the basic ability to keep eye contact while talking and holding a basic conversation. However, these are not the types of problems I am talking about with cell phones. The real issue I am questioning is the radiation in cell phones. Can they cause cancer?
Stated from dailymail.uk and wikipedia.org respectively, approximately “6 billion people in the world own a cell phone” and “327,577,529 Americans own cell phones”. With numbers as large as these I hope cell phones are safe and do not put us humans in danger. Myself, as well as everyone I know are on their phones every day for various reason. Especially people my age use their phones excessively and on a daily basis. Technically, my age group is the “test generation” to find out if they are harmful. Possibly in 20 years or so a majority will develop illnesses due to this, or, maybe we wont. I wanted to look further into this.
In this article from mercola.com , “previous research has shown that those who begin using cell phones heavily before age 20 have four to five times more brain cancer by their late 20s, compared to those whose exposure is minimal.” This is alarming because who wants to increase their risk of a brain tumor, let alone get one in their twenty’s. As a matter of fact, cell phones are listed as items that may lead to cancers. This is astounding to me due to all of the cell phone users around. Whether each country’s population is educated or illiterate does not matter; 6 out of 7 billion humans own a mobile phone.
This should not be a question if cell phones do cause cancer. With 6 billion people having cell phones in the world, there are far too many humans at risk so it needs to be figured out now. Although it may seem easy to test the direct connection between cell phone radiation and cancers, it is only becoming more difficult. Technology may be improving, but leaves more and more people on electronics, such as T.V.’s and computers. Who’s to say this can or can’t be confounding (Z) variables. Maybe all of the radiation that is causing an increase in cancer is from other radioactive electronics. While this is possible, it is most likely to be caused by the cell phone. This is because it is used the most compared to other electronics and it usually placed extremely close to the human head. Some factors that can affect the amount of radiation the phone gives off to the person are, “The amount of time the person is on the phone… Whether or not the person is using the speaker mode on the phone or a hands-free device… The distance and path to the nearest cell phone tower… The amount of cell phone traffic in the area at the time… The model of phone being used”, stated in this article from cancer.org . All of these factors change the amount of radiation affecting the brain, and can be things to think about next time on the phone.
After all of these concerns for cell phones, the real question is, “are they safe”? A majority of people use them and they have become a part of daily life. However, the radiation they give off can contribute to brain cancers in the future. This does not mean throw away cell phones and find a replacement. It just means to try and limit the amount of time spent on your mobile phone every day. Hopefully in the future when we are in our late twenty’s we will not encounter any cancers, but only the future can tell. For now, I will keep on using my cell phone as I please along with everyone else.
Sources:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/01/06/cell-phone-use-brain-cancer-risk.aspx
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/athome/cellular-phones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use
Good post. I was actually going to do a post on this exact subject but chose not to. Cell phone and its harm has ben a topic of conversation that has died out but with the increase of technology use maybe we should bring it back to the table. The brain scan in your post really got my attention and puts some concern into mind. I’m not going to stop using my phone but its always good to explore some hazards.
I went into this blog post thinking I would see a mention of texting and driving, and I thought it was really interesting how you mentioned the internal effects of cell phones rather than the external. This blog post definitely hinders on my cellphone use time! In addition to the internal reasons you mentioned, I figured it was important to share the external consequences of texting. The article is sort of self explanatory, being that the statistics are hair raising enough. http://www.distraction.gov/stats-research-laws/facts-and-statistics.html