Inside the ER
You'll notice that the warning from emergency room doctors about the dangers of text messaging is "anecdotal," and includes no numbers, percentages or rates. That's because the numbers are so small, they're probably statistically irrelevant. ERs keep detailed records about why people are injured. Why did they choose to not quantify this "trend"?
A whopping 31 million emergency rooms visits each year result from "accidental injuries." These injuries are caused by (in order of frequency) car accidents, falls (mostly elderly people and young children), drowning, fires, bicycle accidents, playground accidents, poisoning and work-related injuries. The number of visits related to text messaging is probably dwarfed by all these other causes.
Some 1.7 million of the visits in 2003 were related to something going wrong with medical treatment. Visiting a doctor is probably several orders of magnitude more dangerous than text messaging.
It's probably true that some people are being distracted by text messaging. But why are mobile phones being singled out as a major cause of injury when in fact they are not?
Do phones really *cause* hyperactivity?
The authors of the Danish National Birth Cohort study say very clearly that other factors besides mobile phone radiation may account for behavioral differences. For example, lower socioeconomic status may contribute to both increased mobile phone use by mothers and behavioral problems in children. Also: Families where parents are on the phone all the time may be paying less attention to their kids.
The assumption of a causal relationship is made mostly by the press. Why are they so eager to blame phones?
Dr. Herberman's misguided memo
Dr. Herberman, who sent the memo to staff saying kids shouldn't use phones, admits his fears are not based on published studies, but on a belief about what future studies will discover.
Actual published research is extensive but inconclusive, and mostly favors the idea that mobile phones don't cause cancer.
Researchers at the University of Utah this year analyzed nine studies on the use of mobile phones by brain tumor patients and found "no overall increased risk of brain tumors among cellular phone users." Other studies conducted in the past two years in Europe determined the same thing -- that using mobile phones doesn't significantly increase the likelihood of cancer.
However, other studies have found some link between mobile phones and cancer. The euphemism is "inconclusive," but in fact studies are contradictory. After all the research, we can say only that mobile phone exposure over several decades might -- just might -- increase the risk of cancer.