Are Cell Phones the Next Cigarettes?

Mobile phones have been around for more than 20 years and are now used by more than 3billion people. Yet questions linger over whether mobile phones can contribute to health problems, including cancer. Cell phones have only been mainstream products for 10 years or so, and it may take much longer than that for adverse effects to show up.

New studies on health and cell phones are tough to get going. In the United States, most research on the topic was discontinued at the beginning of the decade, largely because industry groups and government considered the questions resolved and haven't been willing to finance new studies.

But scientists are concerned that cutting off studies could be a mistake.

"It was 15, 20 years after people began smoking that we saw concerns associated with it," says Michael Kelsh, principle scientist and epidemiologist for Exponent, a scientific consulting firm. "Down the road, the same could happen with phones."

The latency period for brain tumors can be 10 to 15 years.

Sources:
MSN Money August 8, 2008