It looks like I’m going to be shopping for a better text-message plan.
For the past year, I’ve been fighting a losing battle against text messaging. My teenage son has a plan that gives him lots of voice minutes, but only 250 text messages. Several times he’s busted his text message limit, incurring overage charges as high as $20. “Why oh why,” I’ve pleaded, “can’t you just call the person and ask about the humanities project or analysis homework or whatever instead of sending five text messages back and forth?”
No more. From now on, I’m going to be encouraging texting instead of calling, weird as that will feel. Because after years of following the cell phone and brain tumor research, while the evidence is not all in, I’m thinking encouraging my kids to hold cell phones next to their heads is not a good idea. And texting instead of talking may just prevent big health problems down the road.
Cell phone radiation always made me a little nervous; I read the Swedish study back in 2002, and I do look at SAR numbers (Specific Absorption Rate, a way of measuring radiation that gets from a cell phone’s antenna into the human head) when I shop for phones.
Since 2002, a number of studies have hinted at long-term problems, reporting
that people who used cell phones heavily for 10 years had a statistically signficant increase in brain tumors on the side of the head on which they typically hold the cell phone. Still, in other studies cell phones came up clean, and, the jury was widely seen to be still out, with the industry and governments awaiting the results of a 13-country study coordinated by the World Health Organization, the so-called Interphone Study. Those results have been delayed for several years; it’s not clear why. Meanwhile, individual researchers involved in the Interphone study have started speaking out.
According to Microwave News, one such researcher, Bruce Armstrong of the University of Sydney School of Public Health told "TodayTonight," an Australian current affairs show, that "I would not want to be a heavy user of a mobile phone. "People might be shocked to hear that the evidence does seem to be coming more strongly in support of harmful effects." And another researcher, Israel's, Siegal Sadetzki, told the Toronto Star that “our results are in line with previous results that are showing something is going wrong here." A few weeks ago, Australian neurosurgeon Vini Khurana stated that cell phones might turn out to be a worse public health disaster than smoking or asbestos.
Meanwhile, all the doctors on television discussing Sen. Ted Kennedy’s glioma, a type of tumor frequently mentioned in conjunction with cell phone use, are making the disease itself more real to me.
The prudent thing to do, many doctors and scientists are advising, is to use a headset instead of talking directly into the phone. Still, wireless headsets are still radiating, albeit with a lot less power than a cell phone; there's no information yet on Bluetooth and the brain.
So texting. I think it’s definitely the way to go. My teenager is going to be thrilled.
