One of the top 10 most frequently read posts on mgk is Do
cellular phone base stations cause brain tumors?, which I wrote
back in May, 2006. The short and sweet of it is ‘no, they
don’t,’ as there’s simply no medical evidence to support the
idea. However, this lack of evidence of harm doesn’t stop the
urban myth machine from propagating rumours. Mainstream media
frequently carry these tales, such as this recent example, “How
safe is your mobile phone?” from the Sydney Morning Herald,
which levers frightening and misleading phraseology: Handsets
from high profile manufacturers such as BlackBerry and Motorola
might be beaming out higher levels of radiation than those of
some of their peers, says a recently published report. The SMH
story cites an outfit called the ‘Environmental Working Group’
which has released a comparison of the ‘radiation’ from
particular makes and models of mobile phones. I suspect this
mythology is mainly due to the use of the term ‘radiation,’
which many people automatically associate wi