The image above shows what happened to test subjects when they were exposed to a cell phone receiving a call for 50 minutes. A portion of their brain became more active; burning more energy. What does this mean to us?
“We have no idea what this means yet or how it works,” said neuroscientist Nora Volkow of the National Institutes of Health. “But this is the first reliable study showing the brain is activated by exposure to cellphone radio frequencies.”
Hmm, that doesn't sound reassuring. A few weeks ago, I was commuting on the SF to Larkspur Ferry and sat across from a lawyer who was working on a class-action lawsuit against cell phone providers to require them to disclose the amount of radiation we were exposed to on each phone. He said the iPhone was particularly dangerous, as the antennae issue meant that the phone was struggling to receive a signal more often than not, which meant it was working harder, which meant our gray matter was ingesting more radiation.
Brain imaging physicist Dardo Tomasi of Brookhaven National Laboratory, who co-authored the new brain-scan-based work, to be published Feb. 23 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed radiation emitted from a cellphone’s antenna during a call makes nearby brain tissue use 7 percent more energy. Apparently, that’s several times less activity than visual brain regions show during an engaging movie, but Mr. Tomasi goes on to state:
“The effect is very small, but it’s still unnatural. Nature didn’t prepare our brains for this.”
Sounds like a very good reason to invest in a headset to keep those rays further away from your brain, and while you're at it, maybe it's a good idea to occasionally unplug and put that thing into "airplane mode" at night to ensure your insides aren't swaying to the sounds of the "dit ditta dit ditta dit" that you hear when you're phone is next to radio.
Live long and prosper.
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