01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Does using cell phones cause cancer? There is increasing evidence of an association between carcinomas and these devices, which, let’s face it, many of us use too much. A highly useful summary of recent findings on cell-phone use in the Aug. 8 The Week magazine (a superb weekly survey of news from around the world) has added to the anxiety about cell phones.

While early studies have found few indications that heavy cell-phone use can cause serious health issues (except, in some people, psychiatric and emotional ones), the effects of long-term use are only now becoming clearer. Early studies only covered use over several years, not a decade or more. And after all, these things have only been in really wide-scale use for about a decade in the U.S. and a bit longer abroad. (In some Third World nations, for better or for worse, cell phones now are the main telecommunications system.)

Nor did early studies focus on the effects on young people, with their still developing brains, and thinner skulls, and thus less protection from cell phones’ electromagnetic radiation than adults might have. Of course, teens these days spend much of their lives on cell phones.

The Week discusses:

• Israeli data showing a 50-percent higher risk among heavy cell-phone users for cancer of a salivary gland.

• A Swedish study showing a doubling of risk for a tumor that affects the area where the ear meets the brain after 10 years of heavy use.

• An analysis by a Swedish oncologist of 10 European studies finding a “consistent pattern of association” between certain brain tumors and long-term cell-phone use.

• Finnish researchers looking at brain-cancer studies in five northern European nations finding “a significantly increased” risk of brain cancers after cell-phone use of more than a decade.

• The University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute warning faculty and staff to curb use because of a “growing body of literature” linking cell-phone use to cancer.

We all know that using cell phones can be dangerous in other ways, especially when you’re driving and doing other activities requiring close attention. And they have added to society’s increasingly troubling attention problems and semi-illiteracy.

But just how dangerous may not be known for some years to come, as the time people spend on these phones accumulates. That the data from Europe are more troubling than those from the United States may simply demonstrate how much the dangers increase with time on these phones. Cell phones became very popular in Europe well before they did in the United States. The longitudinal studies are that much more thorough.

Meanwhile, there’s much anticipation about the World Health Organization’s study of data from 13 countries collected over more than a decade. It’s due out later this year.

In any event, as some scientists have long suggested, it’s best to use an ear piece or speaker phone if you use cell phones a lot. And if you can find one, use a land line.