Beware Your Blackberry!

We’ve blogged before about the danger of Blackberry addiction. However, the latest research linking cell phone use with brain cancer risk is much scarier than Blackberry orphans.
We first started worrying about cell phone radiation at the ending of the film Thank You For Smoking. It was easy to dismiss a Hollywood quip, but it’s harder to ignore a news report on an award-winning expert on cancer research:

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take “immediate steps” to reduce exposure to their radiation.
The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.
It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.

The article goes on to cite a dismissal of the doctor’s work by the “Mobile Operators Association.” Given that the MOA’s members include T-Mobile and Vodafone, we’re not exactly reassured.
Is the fear of brain cancer enough to make us stop using our cellphones and Blackberries? Probably not. We know french fries likely cause cancer, but we can’t give those up either. We are warming to the idea of a phone headset, though.
Mobile phones ‘more dangerous than smoking’ [The Independent via Drudge]

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