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The cell phone next to your brains is in the news again.

The FCC has decided to review the 16-year-old regulations that govern the amount of microwave radiation they are allowed to emit.

Because the current reg’s were put in place in 1996, long before cellphones became nearly an appendage especially among young people and children, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has suggested a formal review of updated science.

Last year for example the World Health Organization added cellphone radiation to its list of “possible” carcinogens and advised further study into the dangers of frequent cell phone use.

Most cellphone users know that some studies show that heavy cell phone use can cause brain tumors, other cancers in the ear, throat and neck and additional health problems particularly among children.

What most don’t realize is that countries including France, Finland, Russia, Turkey and Israel have already acted on these reports, are actively warning people about cell phone risks, and discourage the use of the phones by children. Some governments require warning signs on handsets and suggest ways of reducing your exposure to the phones’ microwave radiation.

The International Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry, the chief lobbying arm of the colossal cell phone industry, has funded hundreds of the studies that found no harmful effects. And as Brian Walsh of Time magazine reported, “…you don’t have to be a raging paranoiac to wonder whether that money might have an impact on the conclusions of those thousands of studies.”

One authority to be reckoned with on the subject is Devra Davis, an epidemiologist, toxicologist, environmental health scientist and author of Disconnect. The book makes a convincing case that by funding hundreds of studies, the cell phone industry — just as the tobacco and chemical companies have done as regards cancer — the public’s opinion and the scientific literature is muddied with doubt. Independent studies on cell phone radiation, Davis has discovered, reported cancers and other illnesses at more than twice the rate of industry-funded studies.

Time lauded Davis’ book, noting that it chronicles solid evidence of increases in certain brain cancers “among unusually young patients who were heavy users of cell phones.” Davis reports on evidence that cell phone radiation could have enough biological power to damage DNA and contribute to tumors. She interviewed Dr. Franz Adlkofer, a German scientist, who found that cell phone radiation “unravels DNA.”    

Lloyd Morgan, director of the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States, told TechNewsWorld June 18, that current exposure standards were set when cellphones weren’t used by a majority of the population, and especially not by children. Morgan believes that new guidelines are likely to be imposed because of cell phones’ vastly increased use. “It is up to cellphone users to take action which, while inconvenient, could reduce the amount of MW radiation to the brain by 10,000 percent or more,” he said.

A couple of ways to reduce your radiation exposure from your cell phone:
    • Davis says to use a wired headset which should seriously reduce one’s exposure to the brain. And Davis recommends that children not be allowed to use cell phones at all because their skulls can allow in higher amounts of radiation.

• Put the phone on “speaker” and use it away from your head.

• Don’t keep the phone in a breast pocket where the antenna is near your heart.

• If you keep the phone in a hip pocket, keep the face toward your body since the antenna is usually on the back of the phone.

— John LaForge works for Nukewatch a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin and edits its quarterly newsletter.