Mobile phones are more harmful than smoking

Brain experts warn of huge rise in tumours and call on manufacturers to take immediate steps to reduce radiation. Mobile phones could kill more people than smoking. They say people should avoid using them wherever possible. The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the devastating indictment published of the health risks.

Using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer.

Earlier this year, the French authority warned against the use of mobile phones, especially by children. Germany and the European Environment Agency also advise its people to minimize handset use.

Professor Khurana, a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years, reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He admits that mobiles can save lives in emergencies, but is sure that “there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours”. He thinks this will be “definitively proven” in the next decade. He adds: “We are currently experiencing a reactively unchecked and dangerous situation.”

He fears that “unless the industry and governments take immediate and decisive steps”, the incidence of malignant brain tumours and associated death level will be observed to rise globally within a decade from now, Professor Khurana, who told that three billion people now use the phones worldwide, three times as many as smoke, says: “It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking.” Tobacco products kill some five million worldwide each year, and exposure to asbestos is responsible for as many deaths in Britain as road accidents.

The Mobile Operators Association dismissed Khurana’s study as “a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual”. He “does not present a balanced analysis” of the published science, and “reaches opposite conclusions to the WHO and more than 30 other independent expert scientific reviews”.

Information Provided by: US Cigarettes

Boston Expected to Prohibit Cigarette Sales at Colleges, Drugstores

Retailers and pharmacies based on college campuses in Boston would be banned from selling tobacco products under new regulations.

If approved, the law would come into effect next year. Retailers that break the ban would face fines of up to $2,000. Boston also bans smoking in outdoor areas of restaurants and bars and shutting down all cigar bars in the city.

Barbara Ferrer, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, said: “Selling tobacco is incompatible with the mission of the city’s 74 pharmacies. “Why, in a place where people go to get healthy and get information about staying healthy, would you want to sell something that has absolutely no redeeming value and ends up killing a lot of people?”

Some pharmacies spoke out against the proposed sales prohibition. Walgreens spokesperson Carol Hively said: “Customers who purchase tobacco products in our stores also would lose the benefit of having pharmacists available to counsel them on how to quit smoking and lose the benefit of seeing smoking-cessation products.”

Critics said that the new bans would only change the buying habits of smokers, not prevent them from smoking. Michael Siegel, a tobacco-control expert at the Boston University School of Public Health said: “I just don’t see the government’s role in regulating the consistency of the mission of a store. Just to extend this, should the public-health mission also ban the sale of candy bars in pharmacies? If we’re going to get rid of cigarettes, why don’t we also get rid of soda? We know soda causes obesity.”

Information Provided by: Cigarette Sales