If your company provides cell or smartphones for employees, keep your ears to the ground and away from units in coming months. That’s because a big compilation of data on potential health hazards of these gadgets is due to be published. Its findings could open the lawsuit floodgates.
The whole “cell phones cause cancer” argument is beginning to feel a lot like the smoking and cancer dust up that went on decades ago.
Back then, big tobacco made a big push to label any research linking their products and consumer deaths as “speculative” and “dubious” science.
But the research started piling up and soon there weren’t many doubts that tobacco use and illness went together like chips and dip.
On the cell phone/brain injury front, we may soon be getting some hard and fast data that will settle the arguments between industry and science yet again.
A long-awaited study by the International Agency for Cancer Research — an agency connected to the World Health Organization — is looking to help billions of cell phone users understand how these popular gadgets may impact users’ health.
Dubbed the Interphone Study, this is a comprehensive look at the results of published national studies in 13 countries (the list includes Canada, eight European nations, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Israel — but not the United States) to assess whether radio-frequency radiation exposure from cell phones is associated with cancer risk.
The findings are now getting the all-important “peer review” that’s necessary for publication credibility.
The international study, though, is unlikely to settle the debate here in the United States. And it’s a sure bet the wireless industry will either downplay or refute any research that links their products to injury or illness.
The battle is likely to stretch on for years, if the tobacco fight serves as any lesson to us. Now in motion is a 10-year, $25 million research project by the U.S. government.
It will soon beam 10 hours’ worth of cellphone radio waves daily into specially designed stainless-steel containers housing rats and mice to test whether cell phones pose any health risk. Preliminary results are expected in two to three years.
How should businesses be managing in the meantime? Better to be safe than sorry (or sick and in litigation, as the case may be).
It will cost companies that issue cell phones or smartphones to employees very little to select phones that come with a speakerphone or headset included. Organizational leaders also needs to mandate that their cell phone use policy requires workers to use one or the other whenever they make a call for company business.
Another safe tactic: Encourage text messaging or e-mail communication to the phone in lieu of a phone call.
Unlike smoking, which nobody actually needs day-to-day, cell phones have become an indispensable tool for business communication and productivity. Getting rid of them could cripple any number of work-related activities.
But companies that are proactive about protecting their workers health on this front will fare much better should the coming research prove a definitive link between using cell phones and illness or injury.
Like we said, better safe than sorry.
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Tags: cancer, cellphones, research, smartphones, study, World Health Organization
March 3rd, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Just wonderful! Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people, in the United States use cell phones. Now we all get to sue our employer if we get cancer!
Some times I wonder how any business, besides the law business, can survive in the United States.
March 3rd, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Well, one thing they neglected to include in this report – bluetooth. That headset better not be wireless, as bluetooth uses RF energy too, and has the potential to be labeled as harmful as well. Wait until they finally discover that the biggest cause of death is life.
March 3rd, 2010 at 4:35 pm
I agree with Tony. Congress will pass a law that allows large settlements in cell phone cases because most of them are lawyers. That way when we boot their sorry butts out of Congress for failing our country, they will be able to make the big bucks by suing Nokia. So sad that is where we are in this country.
March 3rd, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Let’s see – the large bulk of RF safety research has been done in the US. So this WHO “International Agency for Cancer Research” is so international that it is excluding US data. This is beginning to look like the UN’s climate change guys! The only reason I can see for excluding the wealth of US data showing no risk is that it doesn’t fit the UN agenda.
March 3rd, 2010 at 8:05 pm
Another effort in futility. It is a known fact that RF radiation is a hazard at higher levels. You probably used RF today to heat your food or beverages. What do you think his happening to your brain on those extended phone calls. What of the long term, low level damage. The elected incompetents now and in the past knew this but allowed these devices and for that matter tobacco to be pushed upon the public. Look at the poor folks who still smoke. They’re ruining their health while subsidizing the local, state and federal governments at $8 bucks plus a pack. All for the sake of progress. Now that definitive research is showing proof of what should have been widely publicized earlier, Congress and their gaggle of clowns and cutthroats will pin the blame on business’s if and when some employees start developing ailments due to excessive cellphone useage. What about the cordless phones that have been in use for close to thirty years. Another publicly funded effort in damage control by pointing the finger and shirking of responsibilities that should be owned up to. What we need is less BS and more honorability in these offices. If not, we can always issue our elected brethren new cellphone with twice the output power….!
March 4th, 2010 at 10:14 am
What a pity that you decided to fuel public concern about this issue with this article. You chose to cite the example of the link between smoking and cancer that the tobacco companies tried to hush up or deny for many years suggesting that this is what is happening with cell phone radiation. Why didn’t you mention the fearmongering some years ago about power line radiation and Alar spraying on apples. These issues caused widespread concern and much wasted breath until science eventually proved the concerns to be groundless. Why don’t you just wait for the science to be published so that we can all base our opinions on real data instead of speculation and paranoia.
March 4th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
I must agree with Graham, this is another example of the media taking a topic and blowing it out of proportion to sell an article. While the public has the right to know about the facts you’re reporting provided only the fact that a study is being done. Your inference that it relates to the smoking issue is embellishing for the sole purpose of sensationalism.
I would like to see a media actually provide the news in fact form and allow us to make our own decisions. Instead the media will report only what fits their political and financial interests and leave out what does not. Not a new concept but more heavily practiced today.
March 13th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
The REAL litigation bomb waiting for employers is for when their employees kill someone while talking about business while driving. How any company can NOT have a “no talking and driving” (never mind texting!) rule enforced by firing is absolutely beyond me.
March 30th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Cell phones are what we basically need in this generation today. Job interviews are now more than ever began through a single phone call. It is just a way of communication that we cannot seem to avoid. It is a vital communication tool.
September 12th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
I pray none of you will ever have to hear your doctor tell you that you have a growth in your brain, and 18 months to live. All because you believe that you “need” to have a cell phone. Well I did have to hear that. And I can tell you first hand it’s a nightmare you don’t want to go through. And be thankful you have this information before the concrete evidence is made public. It may save your life if you heed it.
I’m wondering if you’ll change your tune when you or someone you love is diagnosed? God forbid!
September 13th, 2010 at 11:26 am
Ken,
I am sorry to hear about your health problems; which must be truly devastating. Your choosing to believe that they are the result of using a cell phone does not mean that they are. It is not intuitive that cell phone radiation should cause cancer. We are all exposed to electromagnetic radiation from many and various sources on a daily basis and have been for decades. If this is as damaging as the cell phone scare proponents claim, we should all be dead by now.