This gist of this report tends to point to the African proverb about a man who sent a child to buy salt only to cause rain to fall on the child. A new research study shows that cases of a malignant type of tumour in mobile phone users have doubled in the last two decades, suggesting that handsets cause cancer.
Scientists say that mobile phones work by transmitting and receiving radio frequency microwave radiation. The study published in the Journal of Public Health and Environment has linked the sharp rise in the rates of brain cancer to mobile phone use.
The study is the first recent effort of its kind to analyse in detail the incidence of different types of malignant tumours. Bringing the study home to Africa, the implication is that an estimated 140 million mobile phone subscribers in Nigeria are at risk of developing brain cancer.
A radiologist at the Radiation Medicine Department of the University of Nigeria College of Medicine and the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu, Prof. Ifeoma Okoye, said, “There is a continued fight between mobile phone companies and medical research community, where there has been clear evidence of association between increased incidence of gliomas and consistent habit of holding phones to the right ear.”
Prof. Okoye, who is also the founder of a non-governmental organisation, Breast Without Spot (BWS), said it is even worse in young persons whose blood brain barrier still allows considerable damage to their brain. The scientists including phone manufacturers and medical experts, need to meet to provide the way forward.
