No, mobile phones still won’t give you brain cancer
The supposed health risk from mobile phones is the story that will never die. The latest claim, branded an “inconvenient truth” by the Observer newspaper, is that new research shows they cause cancer in rats. But like all previous incarnations of this tale, the real truth is that the evidence has been overblown and there is nothing to worry about.
Cell phones have been accused of everything from causing brain cancer to “frying” men’s testicles over the years. Phones emit radiation to communicate with mobile phone masts, and radiation has always had a bad rap, thanks to the well-known effects of X-rays and nuclear fall-out.
But phones use a form known as non-ionising radiation, meaning it doesn’t carry enough energy to tear electrons away from their atoms and turn them into ions. It’s this electron-stripping that means X-rays, for instance, can cause cancerous mutations in our DNA.
