UPMC doctor takes cellular phone warnings to Congress

The UPMC doctor who first warned of the potentially cancerous risks of cell phone use took his… The UPMC doctor who first warned of the potentially cancerous risks of cell phone use took his message to Congress last’ week. ‘I cannot tell this committee that cell phones are definitely dangerous,’ said Dr. Ronald Herberman on Thursday. ‘But I certainly cannot tell you that they are safe.’ This July, Herberman, the director of Pitt’s Cancer Institute, wrote an advisory for employees detailing how to avoid the potential health risks associated with cell phone use. The document caught the attention of U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who invited Herberman to speak about the carcinogenic effects of cell phone usage to the U.S. House Domestic Policy Subcommittee last Thursday. ‘With cell phone use becoming much more pervasive than smoking ever was, we think it’s prudent to be cautious,’ said Herberman, who also serves as the director of UPMC Cancer Centers. Most American studies on the subject have concluded that there is no convincing evidence to support a connection between cell phones and brain tumors. However, in his testimony before Congress, Herberman said the major studies failed in two ways. Most of the studies failed to compare cell phones to cordless phones, which also emit radio frequency signals, said Heberman, and most of the studies were too short to screen adequately for cancer. Residents in some Scandinavian countries have been using cell phones for more than two decades, much longer than in the United States. Oncologist Dr. Lennart Hardell, who works in Sweden, found that people who used cell phones were twice as likely to develop malignant tumors and special tumors on the hearing nerve located very close to the human ear. Hardell also found that people who started using cell phones in their teens were five times more likely to develop brain tumors by the age of 29. Herberman said he sees an important analogy between these recent studies and those that eventually revealed a connection between smoking and lung cancer. ‘It took many years for the connection between smoking and lung cancer to be definitive,’ he said. Heberman said he’s ‘been in quite a bit of contact’ with other cancer researchers because he hopes to coordinate a more rigorous study on cell phone usage. Like smoking, cell phone use may lead to cancer, he said. Herberman, said that nobody can conclusively say whether cells phone are harmful because there’s not enough evidence. However, oncology experts from the Pittsburgh area and research done in European countries convinced him to question their safety. ‘ Herberman suggests that people use and carry cell phones less often; use headsets, which considerably reduce the amount of wave radiation; and switch sides when talking on the phone to spread out wave exposure to the brain. Cell phones emit electromagnetic field radiation, whose rays penetrate into their users’ brains. In the fully formed adult brain, penetration levels are low, but the rays can penetrate deeply into the brains of 5- and 10-year-old children, the advisory said. Scientists at Pitt’s Center for Environmental Oncology said that they don’t know exactly how it happens, but that EMF radiation can damage DNA, causing cancerous growths to form on brain cells. Herberman added that he doesn’t have an agenda against cell phone companies. He said he only wants more scientifically rigorous study done on this issue so that if cell phones are dangerous, the world will be ready to deal with it.