Editorial: Waiting for the details on cell phones

How many times did you use a cellular phone yesterday? How about this week or this month?

It’s so commonplace to use cellular phones that it is easy to lose count.

So, it is unnerving when a leading cancer researcher sends a memo to 3,000 of his colleagues saying they should limit their cellular phone use because of possible higher health risks.

What is it that Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, knows that the rest of us haven’t been told?

Well, he says it’s based on unpublished data.

“We shouldn’t wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later,” he says.

In the memo, he writes, “I am convinced that there are sufficient data to warrant issuing an advisory to share some precautionary advice on cell phone use.”

Some of that advice that he provided in his memo included switching the sides of the head from which a cellular phone is used during a conversation. He also says speakerphones and headsets should be used. And children, he warns, should be protected if they’re going to use a phone, and he recommends they only do so in an emergency.

While these are all reasonable actions to take, the question remains: Is Herberman being overly cautious or does he have information that we’ll soon learn that will make us change our habits.

So far, federal studies have been inconclusive about the impacts of cellular phone use and health-related risks. And there hasn’t been an academic study that has confirmed a link to higher brain-tumor risks, according to the BBC and other news reports.

The risk, according to some, is from the radio signals and electromagnetic fields that are sent out of a cell phone. Some people believe these can damage the human brain.

But there hasn’t been a conclusive finding, though some researchers admit it will take more research and time is needed. Remember, cellular phones are a fairly recent invention that have become mainstream in the past 15 years.

More research is necessary, especially since these are devices that are now part of daily life.

As for Herberman’s warning to his colleagues, it likely wasn’t meant to be made public but now has. And maybe it gives some advice that some will follow.

As for the possibility of cancer problems from the phone, the millions of cell phone users deserve to have research presented to them showing whether or not this is a problem. We think the public would like to know what Herberman knows that the rest of us haven’t been told.

This editorial appeared in Friday’s Sierra Vista Herald, a sister newspaper of the Green Valley News with Wick Communications Co.