Should You Be Snuggling With Your Cellphone?

[Commentary] Warning: Holding a cellphone against your ear may be hazardous to your health. So may stuffing it in a pocket against your body.

The legal departments of cellphone manufacturers slip a warning about holding the phone against your head or body into the fine print of the little slip that you toss aside when unpacking your phone. Apple, for example, doesn't want iPhones to come closer than 5/8 of an inch; Research In Motion, BlackBerry's manufacturer, is still more cautious: keep a distance of about an inch. The warnings may be missed by an awful lot of customers.

The United States has 292 million wireless numbers in use, approaching one for every adult and child, according to CTIA-The Wireless Association, the cellphone industry's primary trade group. It says that as of June, about a quarter of domestic households were wireless-only. If health issues arise from ordinary use of this hardware, it would affect not just many customers but also a huge industry. Our voice calls -- we chat on our cellphones 2.26 trillion minutes annually, according to the CTIA -- generate $109 billion for the wireless carriers. Henry Lai, a research professor in the bioengineering department at the University of Washington, began laboratory radiation studies in 1980 and found that rats exposed to radiofrequency radiation had damaged brain DNA. He maintains a database that holds 400 scientific papers on possible biological effects of radiation from wireless communication. He found that 28 percent of studies with cellphone industry funding showed some sort of effect, while 67 percent of studies without such funding did so. "That's not trivial," he said.