Medical professions attending a congressional hearing this week have said that a large-scale study of the long-term health effects of cell phones needs to be carried out, especially in children. During a hearing before the House subcommittee on domestic policy, Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute discussed how cell phones affect adult and growing brains.
Herberman used model brains of an adult and a 5-year-old, each with a cell phone held to a corresponding ear to demonstrate that while cell phone radiation travels two inches into the adult brain, it reaches far beyond the center of a child’s brain. “I cannot tell this committee that cell phones are dangerous, but I certainly can’t tell you they are safe,” said Herberman. Herberman recently made news with his much-publicized memo urging his 3,000 staffers to limit their and their children’s cell-phone use. “We urgently need to do a study [to resolve this question],” he told the subcommittee, which was chaired by Representative Dennis Kucinich (Democrat-Ohio). (more…)

