The New Statutory Warning: Mobiles Riskier Than Smoking

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It's not an urban myth, according to a renowned Australian surgeon. New research has revealed that mobile phones are more injurious to people’s health than smoking. According to one of the world’s top neurosurgeons, Dr. Vini Khurana, using mobile phones for 10 years could double the risk of brain cancer. "This danger has far broader public-health ramifications than asbestos and smoking,” he said.

Dr. Khurana based his assessment on the fact that three billion people now use the phones worldwide, which is three times higher than people who smoke. Smoking kills some five million globally each year. However, statistics are not available to prove the correlation of mobile phones to health problems, Dr. Khurana says,"In the years 2008-2012, we will have reached the appropriate length of follow-up time to begin to definitively observe the impact of this global technology on brain tumor incidence rates." He has called for a further broad-based study over a much longer period of time. He believes that observing heavy phone users for a period of 10 to 15 years will provide the grounds for the dangers which his study has brought out. The dangers are imminent as we are increasingly dependent on the mobile for our daily communication needs. Also, with each passing day, the number of users is only increasing.

Dr. Khurana reviewed more than 100 previous studies on the effects of mobile handsets and concluded people should avoid using cellphones whenever possible and called on governments and industryies to take “immediate steps” to reduce radiation exposure through the devices. He said the signals could heat the side of the head potentially harming the brain. Also, Bluetooth devices, equally dangerous, convert the brain into a signal absorbing antenna.

The French government has already warned against mobile phone use, particularly by children. Also, Germany and the European Environment Agency have urged its people to minimize their exposure to mobile handsets.

Meanwhile, the Mobile Operators Association of Australia has dismissed Dr. Khurana’s study as “a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual.” It “does not present a balanced analysis” of the published science, and “reaches opposite conclusions to the World Health Organization and more than 30 other independent expert scientific reviews.”

Dr Khurana is a specialist neurosurgeon at the Canberra Hospital and an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Australian National University. Dr. Khurana has posted his analysis on a neurosurgery Web site and a paper about his research is currently under peer review for publication in a leading scientific journal.