Health Watch: Cell Phones and Brains

Many of us spend an awful lot of time glued to our cell phones every day but is it safe?
A new government study raises new questions about how our cell phone habit affects our brains.
The findings raise some interesting questions but they don't give us a whole lot of answers when it comes to the safety issue.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health used pet scans - which show brain activity on a cellular level - to study volunteers who held a cell phone to their ear for about 50 minutes at a time.

Some had the cell phone turned on but muted and some had the phone off. The team found radio waves from the phone seemed to turn up the activity levels of certain areas of the brain.

In the areas closest to the antenna -- that control memory and our cognitive skills - the activity levels went up by about 7-percent. The further away from the phone, the more the activity decreased.

 

So, bottom line, the electromagnetic energy the phone emits was able to alter brain activity.

The question is whether those changes are something we need to be concerned about.

Several major studies have failed to find a link between cell phone use and brain cancers.

And while this study found an increase in brain activity, it raises questions about how using the phone all the time affects the brain long term.

That's important because especially because a whole generation of kids have grown up with the phone almost attached at the ear.

But a spokesman for the CTIA - the wireless industry group - says the science so far has overwhelmingly indicated wireless phones do not cause a public health risk - or adverse health problems.

The lead researcher says she is planning a retrospective study to see if long-time cell phone users who spent two hours a day on the cell phone have had any health problems.

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