I have read several reports of people who said they experienced pain when using cell phones. But the comments were all anecdotal so I don't think one can conclude much. Have you tried a headset?

Have been expericing ear pain while using my cell for the last few months..is getting increasingly worse,am interested if anyone else is feeling this..

I experience pain in both ears, especially the right one, although I hold the phone to my LEFT ear – it is really quite severe, & I have to ask friends & colleagues not to call me on my mobile except in emergencies. . . . there has to be a reason for this?

Sensationalist stories, speculation on causes of pain, and glossing over the fact that no science can show negative effects of wireless “radiation” simply leads to scare tactics. If there truly was danger in cell phone and 802.11 use, we should see a tremendous rise in cancer at the rate of wireless use increases. Instead, EVERY type of cancer has begun DECREASING. Go ahead, look it up. As far as commercial shushing of the scientific community, the possibility is of course there when only wireless companies fund research. But research funding from traditional phone companies and other companies interested in capturing segments of the wireless market would easily make up for this. But they haven’t done the research, do you know why? There’s nothing to find! The evidence from cancer and health trends, with life expectancy rising and disease dropping, simply cannot back this theory.

Jason, I find your comments a bit odd since Dr. Carlo did look up the statistics and in fact found a notable increase in certain types of cancer of the ear amongst cell phone users compared to a control group of non-cell phone users.

Dr. Carlo also explains that few things tend to just kill people dead and that finding dangerous effects of various items and separating those effects out from the general background noise is difficult. He gives the example of smoking where it actually took several decades before enough evidence could be amased to conclusively prove that smoking directly caused diseases that led to death.

Also Dr. Carlo to the best of my knowledge does not claim that cell phone use causes cancer. What he claims is that there are many correlations with cell phone use and cancer (such as the study I mentioned above) and that this is therefore cause for concern.

Dr. Lai’s work also demonstrated a physical mechanism whereby cell phones could cause cancer but that doesn’t mean they do in the wild.

The key point to my blog post and the articles and books it links to isn’t to say ‘cell phones cause cancer’. Rather the point is to directly link to credible researchers with concrete stories to tell of how their attempts to determine if cell phones cause cancer were shut down by the government and industry. In other words rather than doing real research to see if the preliminary indicators are correct, that there is a correlation between cell phone use and cancer. Government and industry is shutting down anyone asking questions and so ensuring that we are all, in effect, guinea pigs in a huge medical experiment.

I urge you to at least read the Dr. Lai article since it is reasonable short and see exactly how the supression of his research was achieved.

I do apologize for any accusatory language. Your blog brings up this topic as an important issue. I read the article and reviewed the information. What I found was still, however, lacking.

Issues of funding are big in today’s world of scienific inquiry, and the prospect of obtaining funding from many corporations is growing. As I mentioned earlier, though, companies exist that would benefit greatly from proving that cell phones / wireless communication cause health problems. These companies would fund a well-proposed research team.

From what the article says, instead of “government and industry… shutting down anyone asking questions,” it seems more like no one is interested in asking the questions anymore. With studies that show a 50/50 split on results, it’s basically a lose-lose situation. Research either showing or disproving causation would just add to the pile, not helping anyone. A well-funded and well-designed study by a reliable group could put this controversy to rest.

As far as showing correlation, it should be obvious to say that cell phone and wireless use has increased drastically in the last 10 years or so. If there was a real risk of increased brain cancer, we should also see a decrease in life expectancy (even assuming not all brain cancers will be fatal). It has continued to increase (Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist). We should see increases in cancer incidence rate across the board if cell phones cause cancer. Instead, incidence has been declining since 1992, with mortality dropping at an even faster rate (American Cancer Society).

My point is, if the cell phone threat were serious we would have to see a general trend relating increasing cell phones prevalence with increasing cancer numbers. But even then, it should be kept in mind that correlation does not equal causation, and that in many cases, the cause is something outside the study or report. A classic example of this would be the following example.

Men who wear spectacles earn more money. This would tend to lead to believing that by wearing spectacles, I could earn more money (if common sense didn’t prevail). But of course this is obviously wrong; bespectacled men make more money because older men generally make more money, and more older men wear spectacles.

As far as scientific suppression, in the article I only find one instance in Dr. Lai’s case- a single quote from a report involving “war-gaming” Dr. Lai’s results (which could mean anything from an attack plan to a public relations plan). Concerning Mr. Phillip’s work, it appears as though Motorola wanted harder evidence and Mr. Phillips disagreed and later refused their funding. Sounds more like a disagreement than a research “suppression.”

In the end, with evenly split research and improving health conditions, perhaps it is best to focus on issues that have been proven to save lives- like driver training for improved accident mortality rates. Let the industry guide the research and let the free-market system work to find the answer.

Nice of you to delete my comment so you could keep the panic flowing…

Actually I have been drowning in work (working 7 days a week for the last month) and simply hadn’t had time to go through the approval mails (I get 100s of comment spams a day so I have a system set up where I get mailed a comment and have to approve it before it’s posted) to approve your comment and post a response.

Your comments about ‘other companies’ wanting to find out about cancer don’t hold water since all the fixed line companies now have relationships with mobiles and all fixed line companies are expected by wall street to become ‘triple play’ companies (e.g. voice, video and wireless). So in fact fixed line companies have a strong disincentive to find anything wrong with cell phones. Furthermore commercial companies are in a particularly bad position to provide the long term stable and wide based funding it takes to prove epidemological effects. Capitalism has many wonderful strengths but social research isn’t one of them.

Also the article I pointed to on Dr. Lai begins and is filled with a whole litany of attacks on him. Read the intro page talking about the various anonymous attempts to get rid of him as soon as his research went into territory that was dangerous to the cell phone companies.

The details of how the attack mechanisms led by the CTIA work were detailed in Dr. Carlo’s book.

Also the assumption that because we see an increase in life expetency cell phones must not be dangerous also doesn’t hold water. This is why epidemology is so hard. The period from the 60s on when cigarettes were seriously studied was one in which human life expentancy exploded. So clearly cigarettes aren’t a danger? Obviously not. What’s really happening is that many wonderful things are happening in society that tend to enhance life and so long as those wonderful things outweigh the negative things then on balance life expectancy goes up. But notice how much faster life expectancy went up once we reduced cigarette usage.

And in terms of your comment that if cell phones were a threat we would see an increase in cancer numbers, again, you’re making incorrect connection. Cell phones wouldn’t be releated to foot cancer or stomach cancer or skin cancer on the legs or other diseases physically out of range of the cell phone itself. So if you look at the total cancer rate and say ‘look, it’s going down’ it means nothing about the danger of cell phones other than the good things being done to reduce cancer are better than the bad things possibly (we don’t know) being done by cell phones. What is interesting is that when Dr. Carlo ran the CTIA’s own cancer study numbers but controlled for cancers within physical range of the cell phone signal, sure enough, he found that people using cell phones for extended periods of time had a markedly higher rate of cancer then those who didn’t use cell phones. Now keep in mind that cancer rates in general are low and 5x or even 10x of a low number is still a low number.

I think the problem here is that there is an expectation that if something causes cancer then it must always cause cancer to everyone. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that cigarettes cause cancer yet the vast majority of the American population smoked cigarettes for literally hundreds of years. Did most people get cancer? No. In fact during the period when cigarettes were at their height we saw one of the fastest increases in human life expectancy and health!

Does this mean that cigarettes were safe? It was all a mistake? No. In fact cigarettes we know are very dangerous and large numbers of people died earlier than they otherwise would have had it not been for cigarettes. But with so many beneficial things going on (better environment, better food supply, better medicine, etc.) the fact that up to a 1/5 of the population was dying early because of cigarettes just wasn’t that clear. And even the smokers who were killed by smoking still died at a later time then they would have previously due to medical advances.

The bottom line is that none of the data you point to is relevant to the question of cell phone cancer rates. The exact same, word for word, arguments you make could be used against cigarettes (certainly the chewing gum companies had a strong incentive to do research against cigarettes, right?).

And just as with cigarettes it was only once pervasive research was funded (and the industry’s own internal but carefully hidden research was published) did we find out the truth and were able to quantify the damage and take action. In this case, as Dr. Carlo points out, the industry has gotten much smarter. Now it appears to only fund studies that are carefully designed to find nothing. See his book about studies on rats and why you use old rats when you don’t want to find cancer and young rats when you do.

I suspect a similar process will have to happen with cell phones. Or, who knows, maybe we’ll be lucky and it won’t turn out to be a problem? I don’t know, but what I do know for sure is that nobody (outside of a few isolated studies in Europe) is seriously trying to find out. And that scares me. I don’t like being a guinea pig especially when there is good evidence from Dr.s Lai and Carlo both that there is a physical mechanism by which cell phones can cause cancer and that cell phone users are experiencing a higher rate of certain kinds of cancers. There is smoke, but that doesn’t mean there is a fire. My request is for serious research to find out if the fire exists.

I also experience extreme ear pain when I use my cell phone. Just started a couple months ago. I always use an ear bud and pain is exactly where the ear bud is. Switched to other ear and now pain is starting on that side. Coincidence? I say not.

I also get head aches from cell phone use. The pain is on whatever side I use the cell phone on. Usually for conversations that last over a few minutes. I usually try to use a headset. I recently moved to a bluetooth headset. It just dawned on me that the headset is a radio itself. I wonder what kind of radiation we’ll see coming from that.

I am experiencing pain in both my ears when I use cellphones over the past few months. And it is only growing worse.
I can really sense. Its only when I take calls on my cellphone that pain starts.

I see one huge difference between the smoking and cell-phone issues. The fact is, as you said, people smoked for hundreds of years. They were dying at an earlier rate, but because so many did it, it wasn’t considered an oddity. On the other hand cell phones and wireless networks have not existed for 100’s of years. So, since the research seems to indicate that tumors could already be formed, in the short time that cell-phones have been around, wouldn’t we still see a dramatic increase in ear-cancer at least, in the whole population? After all, we’ve gone from 0% of the population using cell-phones, to as much as 60% in a few years! Who knows, maybe the research is correct. But, it’s rather hard to believe this kind of thing, when these days it seems like there isn’t anything that isn’t said to cause cancer.

Actualy in Dr. Carlo’s book he says we are seeing an increase in the type of cancers one would expect (given physical proximity and best guesses as to causation) but in general no one is systematically looking at these cancers in order to figure out how much their incidence is related to cell phone use. He also gives concrete examples of studies that are done so as to make sure not to find any relation. See the article and conversations above for details.

I hate my cellphone. I experience extreme pain down my arm and into my hand on the side I am using the phone. In addition it affects my eyes they end up twitching and kind of going cross eyed, I experience nausea and I get a immediate headache that would make a migrane jealous. I am actually afraid to use it anymore. I have been told to try and get ear buds. I have stopped using my cell phone other than in emergency situations. What is actually causing this? I do seem to be a person that is extremely affected by
electric currents and shocked easily as well.
I am trying to get help and I hope that none of the people on this site attack me stating that what I am saying is not true, when I know it is. Nothing else in this world has affected me in such a freightening way as happens when I simply use a cell phone.

I always experience dizziness when using cell phones. Being a electrical engineer and an avid radio buff I have some respect for the power of microwave radiation.

Does anyone know if wireless internet routers pose the same (potential) health hazards as cell phones? I am considering taking my son out of a pre-school that has a cell phone tower in its spire (it’s in a church). My husband thinks I’m being ridiculous – especially as we have wireless internet at home. Is wireless Internet as dangerous as a cell phone tower???!!!

When my wife and I were purchasing our home we were freaked out about being too close to cell towers. I still am. But unfortunately every home we found was within sight of a cell tower. In fact, it turned out the place we were renting while we looked for a home was within sight of a cell tower but we hadn’t noticed because the tower was hidden. Eventually we just gave up trying to get away from them.

As for wireless Internet, I don’t know and neither does anyone else. In theory wireless Internet is safer because the energy involved is much lower (the signal only has to travel a relatively small distance). But on the other hand we are drenched in that signal 24/7 so might it have an incremental effect? I’ve never found a decent study. So consider yourself, your child, all of us, guinea pigs in a big experiment.

Whenever I use a cell phone for more than 10 minutes, my ear aches. It’s a sharp pain that lasts for 12-18 hours. I saw a physician the first time it happened, because I thought I had an ear infection. I haven’t had an ear infection since I was a child, but oh well. My doctor found nothing wrong with my ear. Very strange. Well, it happened twice again — both times after being on the cell phone for more than 10 minutes. It never occurred to me that it was caused by my cell phone. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I seldom use my cell phone except for emergencies. In view of my recent ear aches, I guess that’s the wisest decision for me.

I never get sick, never take medications, and maybe see a doctor two times every ten years. I’m hardly a hypochondriac. I thought this was an odd occurrence I came across this and several other websites. Thanks!

I have been experiencing ear pain esp. my right for a long time now. Since my husband lives out of town I use my phone a lot for long periods of time. I thought it was just tmj pain but I definately see a correlation between the time I spend on my phone and the intensity of my ear pain. Sometimes it feels like a dull ache and others it is sharp, shooting, and kinda stings! Along with this ear pain I get headaches and dizziness a times. Weird! Does anyone else experience these things?

I’ve had sporadic pain near my ear over the past few years of cell phone use. The other day the pain started again. I moved the phone away and it stopped when the phone was about 6 inches away from my head. That was by far the worst pain I’ve had with it. Since then, I’ve not used the phone much, but my jaw is very sore. Don’t know if I should visit the doctor, or just start using a headset. Does a headset cause pain as well?

Here’s a recent video of Dr. George Carlo explaining the mechanism of harm from cell phone radiation:
Cell Phone Radiation – Mechanism of Harm

I too have ear pain in *both* ears when using my cell phone- it feels as if my tympanic membrane is vibrating. The problem is identical when using a Bluetooth or the handset but is less severe when using a corded headset. I had no problems with my first 3 phones and initially with my current phone, but the problem is so severe now that I can’t really use my phone any longer. Could increasingly saturated airwaves be the culprit (interference)?

I have a lot of expertise on this topic, and I am not biased. I am an electrical engineer (was one of the top in my class at MIT, class of 1908, bot h bachelor’s and master’s). I am an inventor (invented Laser Tag, Radio Fence, and an implantable transmitter which can be self-triggered to locate a person who is kidnapped). As you might guess by some of thesei inventions, I have done Radio Frequency measurements out the wazoo.

Electromagnetic frequencies in the frequency range that cell phones operate do interact with tissue, but only by heating the tissue. That is not *not* to say that heating is insignificant. It takes only a one degree change in your core body temperature before doctors would say you have a “low grade fever”, and fevers are certainly destructive. Elevating the temperature of an area of the body for an extended period of time will produce statistically noticeable results in the functioning of systems in that region (including the immune system).

It is not true that cell phone radiation only penetrates a short distance into your head. That is pure crap. It goes right through your head, no problem. If it didn’t, you could loose signal from a cell tower just by standing still and slowly turning in a circle. No such effect.

It is not the fact that the electromagnetic field from a cell phone “radiates” that causes a problem. It is the intensity and the heating effect. Near-field electric and magnetic fields do not have to radiate at all to cause a problem, they just have to be intense enough to cause heating.

Since the intensity of the near-field electromagnetic field near a transmitter falls off at the rate of the reciprocal of the cube of the distance from the antenna, the field is much more intense on one side of your head than it is on the other if you hold the antenna right near your head. There have been studies done that show temperature gradient in someone’s head during prolonged use of a cell phone. It is small, but definitely measurable.

I have personally not seen a cancer study that shows any increase in cancer in brain cancer for cell phone users, and I have looked. There are lots of studies funded by research institutions that have nothing to do with cell phone companies. If you had ever done research at a major institution like MIT, you would laugh at the thought of any all-controlling conspiracy. There are always *tons* of professors who would like to make a big name for themselves by upsetting a currently held “truth”, and no one shows up at their doors to bribe them out of trying. Certainly no one did with me.

If you think about what you wrote above, you will see that the study that showed overall brain cancer did not go up is in direct conflict with the supposed study that said that cancer rates go up on one side of the head. If cancer rates went up on one side of the head and average cancer rates did not go up, then cancer rates would have to go down on the other side of the head. No way.

By the way, putting a heating pad on your head may be significantly worse than using a cell phone. Likewise for sitting in a 104 degree hot tub. Just something to think about.

The point in the article was that the original study looked at all forms of brain cancer and compared the population of people who used cell phones and those who did not use cell phones and could find no statistically relevant difference in their cancer rates.

The newer study took the exact same data but only looked for cancers that occurred within a few inches of the skull on the side of the head the user normally used their cell phone. The reason this was an interesting question to ask wasn’t because of the danger of the signal from the tower (after all, we are all bathed in that so differentiating between cell phone users and non-users would be meaningless) but rather because the phone itself transmits a signal and the transmitter for that signal is sitting right next to the person’s skull. That is the aspect that creates a meaningful difference between cell phone users and non-cell phone users.

When just looking at cancers that appear near the surface of the skull and controlling for the side of the head the cell phone was used on (after all, the cube law argues that the exposure on one side of the head will necessarily be larger than the other side) the result was that people who used cell phones had a statistically relevant higher incidence of cancer near the skull on the side they used the cell phone.

The study did not determine why this affect occurred. It only determined causality but not cause. Perhaps it’s heating? Perhaps it’s some interaction between radio waves and the body’s cells (something Dr. Lai’s research demonstrated was feasible). But that is really beside the point. The key point, to me, is that cell phone users did have a higher rate of brain cancer on within a few inches of their skull on the side of their head that they used the cell phone than did the general population. So something from the cell phone is giving them cancer, something the Cell Phone companies and the government regulatory agencies claim is impossible. That’s the part I find interesting.

Ugh, just glanced at my own post and saw I typed my class year as 1908 instead of 1980. When writing for Wikipedia one can edit posts, but I guess not here!

My comment is much the same as those mentioning pain in the ear while using their cell phones. I call my phone the electronic leash; I use it constantly all day. While in the Air Force, I noticed I didn’t have pain when I went away on missions, usually two to seven day trips, the pain came back upon return one I would begn using the cell phone again . Appx September or October of 2000, I pleaded with the Flight Surgeon to give me a referral to have my head scanned. I wanted this done because of the pain and I was retiring November 1, 2000; I think they did a CAT Scan; they found nothing. Shortly after, I discovered my phone had a bad antennae; I noticed less pain after getting a different phone. Since retiring, I haven’t noticed any significant (I usually talk myself out of it) pain until recently.
I’m a Landlord/Property Manager/Realtor. I’ve been doing this mainly since my retirement. I’m on the cell phone from 7 am to 10 pm, sometimes later; my cell phone is on 24 hrs a day; my usage is usually about 3500 or more minutes/month; I have unlimited incoming and outgoing. I don’t answer my house phone; everyone calls on the cell. I’ve made it my “lifeline”. Now with the pain, I have to ween myself from this device. About five months ago,I returned my phone because it was overheating and I had pain in the ear as well. I also bought a BlueTooth headset;I don’t use much because callers complained they couldn’t hear me well. I drive a F-250 diesel truck (big noisemaker). THE PAIN IS HERE!! I vary holding the phone on the left side and the right. I hold the phone a few inches from my ear when listening and put it back to my ear to speak. I use speakerphone when possible. I’m letting more of my calls go to voicemail; listen to the message on speakerphone; then delay returning as many calls until I’m at my office phone. I’m contemplating putting the message on my voicemail that I’m having pain in my ears when using my cell phone and callers should leave a message.

I’m not sure if my cell phone is causing this pain, but it only hurts when I use it. It feels like someone has drilled into my ears; it feels clogged up. I plan to make an appointment to have my ears checked; I hope it’s an ear infection on both sides. I will share this post with my family and friends. I plan to use my cell phone less until I know it’s not the cause of the pain.

Add me to the list of people who experience discomfort/pain while using my cell phone for an extended period of time. Are bluetooths any better?

Yeah, me too. Cell phone use causes ear pain. Same side as phone.

There’s somethin’ happening here.

After a CAT scan and a MRI the doctors discovered I had a tumor (PVNS) in my TMJ, on the left side right by my ear. This so happens to be the only ear that I have ever used my cell phones with. I have always kept my cell phones in my left pant leg pocket too and at many different times my muscle would quiver in the exact location that my cell phone was.

When I asked the doctor the possiblities of bringing a law suit against the cell phone company, he said No, there is not enough case evidence of it happening to anyone else.

If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. Thanks

This is more than a little disturbing. I am a blackberry user for the last decade, and have lived off cell nets since the begining. I have recently noticed a pain in my head near my right temple when on phone more than ten minutes, I then move phone to other side of my head and within a few minutes it starts to hurt as well. I switch to speaker phone to reduce it.
How many above have undergone ct or mri scans after this type of pain ?

There is one certainty in my case, this is a direct causal relathionship, not coincidence.

I never had pain in my ears until I really started using a cell phone. Now it hurts to use a landline, particularly in my left ear. I don’t care what science is saying regarding health and cell phones – just listen to common sense. If you don’t have pain before using them – and you do afterward – then there must be something going on that isn’t heathly.

I have to reluctantly admit (as I was a skeptic of making EMF accusation) but recently I have developed a lump under my ear and the use of my cell phone, which i use a minimum of 2 hours total a day, gives me a weird ear ache and head ache, dizziness and fatigue. I am worried don’t have insurance right now and don’t know what to do. Kind of feel like i need to choose between denial or get it checked out. I am getting a blue tooth tomm. need to take calls for work can’t avoid it.

I’ve been away from the cell phone for several days and the pain has gone away. From now on, I am going reduce my use of the cell phone and stay on the land line. I don’t give a happy damn about what science says. I don’t trust the cell phone. I don’t think it’s healthy.