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Mobile Phones "More Dangerous Than Smoking"
By Geoffrey Lean
The Independent UK
Sunday 30 March 2008
Brain expert warns of huge rise in tumours
and calls on industry to take immediate steps to reduce radiation.
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.
Earlier this year, the French government warned against the use of mobile phones,
especially by children. Germany also advises its people to minimise handset
use, and the European Environment Agency has called for exposures to be reduced.
Professor Khurana - a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over
the past 16 years, has published more than three dozen scientific papers -
reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has put the
results on a brain surgery website, and a paper based on the research is currently
being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.
He admits that mobiles can save lives in emergencies, but concludes that "there
is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone
usage and certain brain tumours". He believes this will be "definitively
proven" in the next decade.
Noting that malignant brain tumours represent "a life-ending diagnosis",
he adds: "We are currently experiencing a reactively unchecked and dangerous
situation." He fears that "unless the industry and governments take
immediate and decisive steps", the incidence of malignant brain tumours
and associated death rate will be observed to rise globally within a decade
from now, by which time it may be far too late to intervene medically.
"It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications
than asbestos and smoking," says Professor Khurana, who told the IoS his
assessment is partly based on the fact that three billion people now use the
phones worldwide, three times as many as smoke. Smoking kills some five million
worldwide each year, and exposure to asbestos is responsible for as many deaths
in Britain as road accidents.
Late last week, the Mobile Operators Association dismissed Khurana's study
as "a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual".
It believes he "does not present a balanced analysis" of the published
science, and "reaches opposite conclusions to the WHO and more than 30
other independent expert scientific reviews".
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