I’m not a huge fan of the current US Supreme Court, but they recently did something right: Bloomberg is reporting the Court denied the revival of a lawsuit against mobile phone companies from a group claiming cell phones cause brain damage, including cancer.
The Court denied the claim for legal reasons – basically, the suit was filed under state law claims, but a court had already ruled that those laws were superseded by federal (FCC) regulations. So the Court ruled the claimant doesn’t get to sue mobile phone companies.
And while you might consider this ruling decided on a technicality, it turned out the right way. Mobile phones don’t cause cancer. Or, if you want to be technically accurate, studies of this topic have shown that any link between cell phones and brain damage is so weak it’s statistically indistinguishable from no link at all.
The exception would be if you’re using your phone while you’re driving. Then the likelihood of brain damage – and spleen damage, and kidney damage, and bone damage, and life damage – jump by a factor of four.
So you can use your phone and not worry about brain damage… as long as you use it intelligently.
Related posts:
- Why I’m (still) not worried about my cell phone hurting my brain
- Repeat after me: cell phones don’t cause brain cancer
(note the followup in the link below!)
- More on cell phones and the lack of harm
- xkcd radiates
