India already has over 900 million mobile phone connections
Pic for representational purpose. (Photo: PTI)
NEW DELHI: Almost a year after World Health Organisation panel added cellphones to a list of things that are “possibly carcinogenic”, Indian born American physician and Pulitzer Prize winner Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee has said that the “preponderance of evidence suggest that there is no link cell phone radiation and cancer”.
While the investigations are on, Dr Mukherjee said that he will suggest the WHO to downgrade cellphones in the list of carciogens. The WHO panel had last year added cellphones to the list of things that are possibly carcinogenic, a category that also includes pickles and coffee.
Before the WHO declared the lethal association, in June 2011 too, the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer had said that even a review of scientific evidence suggested that cell phones should be classified as “possibly carcinogenic”.
A working group of 31 scientists from 14 countries met in France to assess potential carcinogenic hazards from exposure to radio frequency electromagnetic fields suggested a risk of glioma, a malignant brain cancer.
“There is no direct evidence that shows the link between the two but that does not mean that we stop investigating,” author of the The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of cancer said. India already has over 900 million mobile phone connections.
In a recent article in the New York Times, Dr Mukherjee said, “The kind of radiation emitted by cellphones-unlike the radiation emitted by X-rays or nuclear bombs-cannot directly damage the DNA. The frequency of cellphone radiation is more than a million-fold lower,” he added.
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