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Are cell phones risky?
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Cell phones are everywhere. There are over
six billion cell phone subscriptions
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worldwide - nearly one for every man,
woman, and child on the planet.
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And many people claim they can no longer
live without them.
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But are they safe?
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Is it possible that something so near
and dear to us could be risky?
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And if so, what kind of risk would it
be?
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Most cell phones these days use lithium-
ion batteries, which, as a previous Risk
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Bites explored, can present a fire risk if
you abuse them.
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But so long as you don't treat your
phone like a racketball, you're probably
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Then there's the non-ionizing radiation.
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Like other wireless electronic
appliances,
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cell phones use high-frequency radio
waves to do their thing.
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These radio waves allow the phone to
communicate with satellites, computers,
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and other phones, which in turn allow us
to communicate with each other.
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What makes cell phones different from
other wireless appliances is that we
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have a habit of holding them next to
our heads.
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So it's perhaps not surprising
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that researchers have asked if there is any
risk associated with extended exposure
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to cell phone radiation.
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To put it bluntly, they want to know:
can cell phones give you brain cancer?
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Researchers in the United States, Sweden,
Denmark, Switzerland, the UK, and other
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countries have been looking into the
question since cell phones first hit the
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market in the nineteen eighties.
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For years, they have tracked cases of phone
usage and brain cancer across time
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After decades of research and massive
studies using hundreds of thousands of
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people from multiple countries, the
answer
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is a resounding: probably not.
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In two thousand and eleven,
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the World Health Organization pulled
together a group of experts from around
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to review the available data on
cell phone radio waves and cancer.
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Their conclusion?
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The vast majority of evidence shows no
increase risk associated with cell
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phone use. However,
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a slender few reports did find a
slight association between cell phone use
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So, the WHO, being a cautious body,
declared cell phone radio wave emissions
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possible human carcinogen.
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What does this mean?
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Simply that the isn't enough evidence to
be sure either way - we can't say that cell
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phones are unsafe.
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But we can't say that cell phones are one
hundred-percent entirely safe yet either.
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That may sound scary, but before you cancel
your phone subscription, consider that
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this category of possible carcinogens
also includes coffee and pickled
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