Your Smartphone Isn't Really Giving You Cancer No Matter How Much You Use It, Claims New Report

For years, some have claimed that radiation from cell phones can give you cancer. In fact, a recent study by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seems to prove that, when rats exposed to cellphone radiation developed tumours. That is, of course, until you really dive in and read the fine print.

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The male rats in the study showed an increase in heart tumours after being exposed to radiation from mobiles, except only at higher levels of exposure. In rats exposed to lower levels of radiation for the same amount of time (nine hours a day for two years) there was no change in their health. And those lower radiation levels are the highest human levels of exposure permitted for device manufacturers, meaning you¡¯re not getting enough radiation to actually cause a tumour.

¡°The levels and duration of exposure to RFR were much greater than what people experience with even the highest level of cell phone use,¡± John Bucher, senior scientist with the NTP, says in a statement. ¡°So, these findings should not be directly extrapolated to human cell phone usage.¡±

In addition radiofrequency radiation, the kind you get from a cell phone, is much lower than the ionizing radiation you might face while getting an X-ray or in the event of nuclear fallout. That¡¯s the kind that, with prolonged exposure, can damage your DNA, but RFR does not. This latest study supports this fact, that cellphone radiation just can¡¯t harm you that way.

Even in the case of the rats that developed minor tumours around their hearts, it was only with the males exposed to high levels of radiation, and not the females. In fact, they didn¡¯t seem to show any health problems in a second study, though the researchers kept monitoring them. That seems to suggest there may have been another cause for those tumours in the first place.

So what does this study mean for humans? Well, the evidence seems to suggest that the ¡°cellphones cause cancer¡± theory is nothing more than a baseless scare. Aside from this particular study, there¡¯s been no noticeable increase in the number of cancer diagnoses each year, despite how much the usage of mobile phones has increased. Your smartphone might be responsible for your addiction to social media, but it¡¯s not giving you cancer.