Eight out of 10 people said they would not stop using their cell phone if studies prove that there is a small chance to alter a person’s brain activity from talking on a cell phone. This means that 80 percent of people would risk a possible brain tumor or other long-term health effects to continue using their cell phone and only 20 percent of people would sacrifice their mobile phone for the sake of staying healthy and not taking a chance on getting a brain tumor from radiation near their brain. Amber Carey, 22, said “I have pretty much my entire life in my phone. I couldn’t go without one.”
A new study shows that long-term use of cell phones may have brain altering affects caused by radiation. The effects of these changes in activity in a person’s brain can eventually cause a rare brain tumor or other long-term effects.
Is It Real?
The feeling most people had about this question was that the threat of brain altering activity and radiation did not seem to be a “real enough threat” for people to seriously consider giving up cell phones. In fact, all of the people interviewed reported that they had never heard of such a claim, and they were very reluctant to even believe it was an honest claim. Wally Ware, 19, asked, “has anybody ever really gotten a brain tumor from a [cell] phone?” The studies don’t show a direct connection to brain tumors from cell phone usage, but the brain activity created from the antenna could trace to a rare brain tumor caused from the radiation.
The people who said that they would discontinue the use of their cell phones did not say that it was a sacrifice as much for them as it seemed to be for the other people who wouldn’t discontinue the use of their phones. The overall response was, “I don’t really care that much.” Mo Salihi, 24, said that “since I got a girlfriend, it might actually be nice to have an excuse to turn it off”. Using this health risk as an excuse still does not seem to resonate with people as an actual health risk. Nobody came out and actually said they were going to stop because they didn’t want to risk having their brain activity altered in a way that could be harmful to their long-term health.
What Would It Take?
The last question that was posed to the survey was what it would take for the people who said they wouldn’t stop using their cell phones to actually stop using them. The answers were almost identical, with everyone saying that the statistics proving that there is a direct correlation needed to be more concrete and if there were specific incidences of people receiving long-term heath defects, they would more strongly consider giving up their cell phones or at least using them less than they currently do. Josh Williams, 21, said “If I actually knew someone who had a problem from [talking on their cell phone], it’d definitely make me think about it.”
Although the studies are preliminary, brain activity has been shown to speed up from the radiation released by cell phones. What that means in terms of health risks has yet to be totally determined, but the potential for health risks still exists. The question is when it will be severe enough to change the way people look at the studies and when it will be serious enough to get people to change their amount of cell phone usage.
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