I bought my first cell phone when I was 34 years old. Somehow, I managed to survive the teenage years, college days, and travel without a cell phone. Of course, now I don’t go anywhere without it. I feel completely lost if I accidentally leave it at home during a simple trip to the grocery store. When my teenagers start driving a car I make sure they own a cell phone and keep it with them. I feel much safer with them on the road knowing they have a cell phone with them. Whenever, my teenage sons go away for a weekend, I make sure they take their older brother’s cell phone with him. I guess I have totally bought into the advertisers’ gimmick of convincing parents that our children are not safe without a cell phone. Advertisers want us to believe that in order to be good parents and protect our children we need to provide them with cell phones. Sometimes we adoptive parents feel like we need to go the extra mile to prove what good parents we are. We know that people are watching us and judging us so we are particularly vulnerable to this type of advertising.

However, what if the opposite is true? What if instead of protecting our children the cell phones are actually hurting them? What if the electromagnetic radiation emitted from cell phone usage is causing cancer? Research has shown that children are affected differently than adults by drugs and various exposures. The EPA while studying chemical exposures has found that physical carcinogens average nearly ten times more dangerous in young children than in adults. We know that a child’s skull is still growing therefore the protection surrounding a child’s brain is thinner. That could cause the radiation emitted from the cell phone to penetrate deeper.

A renowned neurosurgeon, Vini Gautam Khurana PhD, FRACS released the results of 14 months of research he completed on February 7, 2008 follows. His research involved the critical review of over 100 sources of recent medical and scientific literature, press reports, and Internet documents. He concluded that there is clearly a link between cell phone use and brain tumors on the same side of the head. He warns that tumors from cell phone use are now a bigger public health threat than cigarette smoking.


Photo Credit Julia Fuller 2007