ARTICLES BY TEACHERS
Phones and Health Risks, what is the real story?
| On a lazy Tuesday afternoon, my five-year old boy came up to me and asked one of the questions that I do not want to hear until he is at least a teenager, “Daddy, can you buy for me a handphone? Not the one with sweets inside, a real one.” That jolted me out of my reverie. At first I was surprised. After thinking about it, I suppose it was only natural for him to want one as he observes and models the behaviour of everyone around him who’s either tapping on their mobile phones or having them glued to their ears. | |
| Of course I am not going to get him one. I told him that a mobile phone would damage his brains and affect his vision since he is so young. Am I telling him the truth or convenient lies? I decided to find out.
Does the use of mobile phones affect our health? How do we find out? This is where scientific process skills will help you to determine the truth. There is a whole host of information on the web with some saying that mobile phones cause cancer and some saying that it is completely harmless. Obviously you should not go to a mobile phone manufacturer’s website to determine if their phones cause radiation sickness. Some may distort or be selective with their findings so that we think that everything is dandy. |
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| What I was searching for is unbiased studies by credible scientific sources such as university findings and scientific journals. Telling you about how to get credible sources and how to select unbiased studies would warrant an entire article. Hence, I shall simply present to you the findings. Firstly, the facts: | |
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| A study by Tokyo Women’s MedicalUniversity in February 2008 compared phone use in 322 brain cancer patients with 683 healthy people and found that regularly using a mobile did not significantly affect the likelihood of getting brain cancer. However in another study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) 2008 found that using mobile phones significantly increased risk of developing glioma, a usually malignant brain tumour.
These two studies encapsulate my findings. For every piece of research which shows how mobile phones cause cancer, another one comes along to prove that it does not. In my own opinion, I think that the link between mobile phones and cancer may be there but perhaps not as great as we fear. |
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| However, the heating of biological tissues is another matter. In my own experience, I sometimes get headaches when I talk on the mobile phone for too long. I think that the temperature rise in my brain cells may account for this.
One other thing, we all keep our handphones in our pockets, which is next to our reproduction system. A mobile phone study conducted by the Reproductive Research at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, indicated that mobile phones that are carried inside trouser pockets altered the chemistry of semen. When transmitting a call, mobile phones appear to elevate levels of free radicals (disease causing molecules) in semen through microwave exposure. The research also suggests that there are dangerous emissions when the phone is in silent or standby mode. Ok that is scary, especially for teenagers undergoing puberty. There is very little data on how mobile phones affect female fertility but do you dare to put your mobile phones in your pockets now? |
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| Based on these findings, I think I will only buy my son a mobile phone when he is 40. So folks, don’t put your phones in your pockets and one last thing, ABC news reported that an average mobile phone has a higher bacteria count than a toilet seat and the flush on the men’s urinal. So go ahead and sanitize your phone! See you in class. |
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