By controversy resurfaces relationship between cellphone use and cancer

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Pensions Commission, Health, Education and Labor, U.S. Senate, promised to thoroughly investigate any possible link between mobile phone use and cancer.

Harkin, who took office in committee this month after the death of Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, said he was concerned by the fact that no one could prove that cell phones do not cause cancer.

"I was reminded of this country's experience with cigarettes. Decades passed between the first warnings on snuff and the final conclusion that cigarettes caused lung cancer," said Harkin, who now has powers to investigate matters on the health.

The mobile phones used by some 275 million people in the U.S. and 4,000 millions around the world use radio waves. Years of research have failed to establish any clear link between its use and various cancers, including brain.

Recently there have been concerns raised by the activist group Environmental Working Group and epidemiologist Devra Lee Davis of the University of Pittsburgh, who wrote a book that said that the Government has overlooked many potential sources of cancer.



Linda Erdreich, the science and engineering firm Exponent in New York, said that 50 years had not shown evidence that cellphones cause cancer.

"This part of the spectrum is known as non-ionizing radiation, said at a hearing, explaining that this means that radio waves can not damage DNA in cells.

Yet Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter pressed repeatedly asking if the science was conclusive evidence that there was no connection.

Erdreich replied: "Your comment that it is difficult to prove a negative result is accurate.

But Specter, a cancer survivor who said he avoids refined sugar and flour by the possibility that they may feed tumors, said: "What I conclude is that we do not know the answer."

The Web site of the Federal Communications Commission, U.S. (FCC) displays a statement that says there is no scientific evidence that the use of wireless phones can cause cancer, headache, dizziness or memory loss .

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA for its acronym in English) has issued a letter of the same tenor.