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Are Cell Phones Safe? The CDC Changes Its Mind

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Wednesday, August 27, 2014   

CHICAGO - The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention became the first federal agency to acknowledge health risks from cell-phone use - but then suddenly backtracked.

Sometime before early June, the CDC posted significant new wording in a "Frequently Asked Questions" section on its website. To the question, "Do cell phones cause health problems in children?" it read, "It's too soon to know for sure," and went on to say that children will have more exposure over a lifetime growing up with cell phones. But last week, that was changed to simply, "It's not known if cell phone use by children can cause health problems."

Washington, D.C.-based public-interest lawyer Jim Turner, chairman of Citizens for Health, speculated the changes were triggered either by industry lobbyists, government officials or both.

"CDC wasn't sitting over there and put the thing up the first time, and then they said, 'Oh, wait a minute, let's take it down,' " Turner said. "Somebody alerted them that they wanted it down or there was going to be trouble."

The CDC has not returned a request for comment. The agency made other backtracking language changes regarding possible cancer and other health risks from cell phones.

Louis Slesin, editor and publisher of Microwave News, said the softening of the CDC's language is puzzling because, as he put it, they've got "bigger fish to fry."

"Just think: Ebola in Africa and all the things that are going on. It's really quite remarkable that someone made the effort to change something that was really very, very minor," he said. "All it was saying was, 'We think there's something to this. Don't discount it.' That's all they were really saying."

The CDC website also originally said, "We recommended caution in cell phone usage," but has removed the "we." Turner said even the softened statement is an eye-opener.

"Now, I will tell you right now: For the CDC to say that 'some organizations recommend caution in cell phone use' is, in and of itself, a very, very significant statement," Turner said.

Slesin said he can't understand - and the CDC won't tell him - why it backed away from acknowledging several international studies that suggest health risks from cell phones.

"This is just telling people, 'We see the data. There are some issues here that need to be worked out. Be cautious until it is,' " Slesin said. "The fact that they backed away from that is really quite extraordinary."

The agency also said in the website's "frequently asked questions" that "more research is needed." Turner said that statement alone should spur the nation's nearly 328 million cell-phone users to learn more about the potential hazards - and what they might do to lessen them.


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