We Still Don’t Know If Cell Phones Cause Cancer or Not
American scientists released two new major studies investigating whether or not there’s connection between cancer risk and cell phone use and the much-awaited answer is…*drumroll, please*…we still don’t really know anything for certain.
The U.S.’s National Toxicology Program released the final results last week of two much-anticipated studies, one on mice and one on rats, which each exposed the animals to cell phone radiation at or above the U.S.’s legal limit for two years. The studies are part of a larger $25 million effort by U.S. federal agencies to assess the health risk of using cell phones.
Mobile phones emit non-ionizing radiation, measured in radio-frequency (RF) energy. While it is widely accepted in the scientific community that exposure to high doses of ionizing radiation—the kind associated with x-rays, CT scans, and nuclear power plants, among others—causes cancer, it is unknown whether long-term exposure to non-ionizing radiation is cancer-causing. Right now, most federal policies regulating cell phones assume it does not.
