The World Health Organization’s International Agency
for Research on Cancer (IARC) has recently classified radiofrequency
electromagnetic fields as "possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B)."
This groupsmobile phone use alongside 240 other agents, including
low-level magnetic fields, for which evidence of harm is uncertain. Though
IARC has found a positive association between mobile phone use and cancer
to be "credible," it notes that the possibility of chance, bias, or other
factors playing a role "cannot be ruled out."
A cell phone’s main source of radiofrequency (RF)
energy (radio waves), is produced through its antenna. The antenna of
newer hand-held cell phones is in the handset, which is typically held
against the side of the head when the telephone is in use. The closer the
antenna is to the head, the greater a person’s expected exposure to RF
energy. The most significant study of long-term use is the 13-country
Interphone study, which reported that overall, cell phone users have no
increased risk for two of the most common types of brain tumor-glioma and
meningioma. In addition, they found no evidence of increasing risk with
progressively increasing number of calls, longer call time, or years since
beginning cell phone use. Yet a precautionary approach needs to be
adopted, considering the growing number of very young children, using the
phone repeatedly and for long durations. Unlike adults, children have
cells that are rapidly dividing and the tissues are growing. Hence the
cells are more sensitive to radiation. Also, the thickness of the skull is
less compared with adults. The area of the brain exposed to non-ionizing
radiation from cell phones is large vis-à-vis adults. On May 31, the
Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly recommended restrictions on the
use of mobile phones and wireless Internet access in all schools thus
making them healthier places for children. (The Hindu 9 June 2011,
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/cellphones)
The Emperor of all Maladies
Siddharth Mukherjee, oncologist, researcher, medical
teacher and now writer has tried to get under the skin of the treacherous
disease called cancer in his book "The Emperor of Maladies – a biography
of cancer". His passionate description of a disease which has outwitted
humans more than 4000 years, has won the Pulitzer Prize in the general
non-fiction category. Siddharth Mukherjee was brought up in New Delhi and
then studied biology in Stanford University. He then won a Rhodes
scholarship to Oxford. His MD was from Harvard University which was
followed by an Oncology fellowship in Massachusetts General Hospital. He
is now assistant professor of medicine in Columbia University.
He is a good story teller weaving stories of patients,
scientists, doctors, and medical advances to paint a vivid picture of this
fascinating disease. He even paraphrases Tolstoy "Normal cells are
identically normal; malignant cells become unhappily malignant in unique
ways". According to the Pulitzer citation, the book by the New York-based
cancer physician and researcher is "an elegant inquiry, at once clinical
and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite
treatment breakthroughs, still bedevils medical science". From the Persian
Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the
nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to
Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is
about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in
order to survive–and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease
(The Hindu 5 June 2011).