Cell phones are safe after all?

While this may not necessarily disprove the claims brought on by a recent European study finding that prolonged cell phone use is associated with the forming of tumors, it is certainly moving that line of thought in the completely opposite direction. According to NTT DoCoMo, KDDI Corporation, and SoftBank Mobile Corporation, “radio frequency energy from mobile phone base stations does not cause damange to human cells in vitro studies.”

The conflict of interest in this collaborative study is pretty darn apparent: they are mobile phone operators, after all, so of course they want you to buy and use cell phones. That said, the three huge companies have been working with one another since November of 2002 studying the effects of radio waves. The World Health Organization (WHO) does agree, however, that “there is no firm scientific evidence that radio waves from mobile phones and base stations have adverse health effects.” You may not be able to prove it, but there’s a good chance that there could be adverse effects… sort of like smoking studies. They can show correlation, but not causation.