Cell phones aren’t a public health risk, no matter what California says by Sara Chodosh

The California Department of Public Health recently released guidelines for decreasing one's exposure to cell phone radiation. This seems, at first, like a reasonable thing to offer. But the problem with a government body issuing guidelines on how to avoid something is that it implies the thing should be avoided. And there’s no evidence that cell phones are dangerous to your health. Period.

Why would the CDPH want to warn against cell phone radiation if it’s not hazardous? According to CDPH Director Karen Smith, “there are concerns among some public health professionals and members of the public regarding long-term, high use exposure to the energy emitted by cellphones.” That press release goes on to say that some public health official thinks the radio waves emitted “may impact human health,” while also stating that “the scientific community has not reached a consensus on the risks of cell phone use.”

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We requested that the CDPH send us the information they used to make this decision, and received a lengthy list of links to other government agencies’ positions on the matter. Nearly all of these other agencies have summarized the evidence as showing that cell phones have not been shown to pose a health risk, but that we need to do more long-term studies. It seems that the CDPH has simply drawn a more precautionary conclusion than most of the other agencies based on exactly the same data.

It may be true that certain public health officials think cell phones pose a risk to human health, but it’s misleading to say that there’s no scientific consensus on the subject. There is. The scientific consensus is that cell phones are safe, but that we should still do more research.

This isn’t the first time that California has played it overly safe, to say the least. They also recently decided that glyphosate, or Round-Up, required a label marking it as a possible carcinogen—even though most national and international health organizations agree that glyphosate is safe to use.

Source: https://www.popsci.com/cell-phone-cancer-public-health-california#page-2