There has been a plethora of articles across the net relating to the World Health Organisation’s latest report on cellphones and their possible link to cancer. If you don’t look slightly deeper than the headlines you’d think that you’re literally frying your brain. So, should you ignore this video by Funny or Die as pure fiction? Yes, probably.

In the interest of social responsibility, I present Science blogger Ed Yong, who works for Cancer Research UK, and who has written an interesting article explaining what the WHO’s report actually means for you and me:

It means that there is some evidence linking mobile phones to cancer, but it is too weak to make any strong conclusions. Specifically, IARC’s panel said that the evidence that mobile phones pose a health risk was “limited” for two types of brain tumours – glioma and acoustic neuroma – and “inadequate” when it comes to other types of cancer.

The Chairman of the group, Dr Jonathan Samet, said, “The conclusion means that there could be some risk, and therefore we need to keep a close watch for a link between cell phones and cancer risk.”

IARC classifies different things according to whether they are likely to cause cancer, from tobacco to viruses to certain jobs. They are the gold standard for this sort of thing. They have five possible categories of risk:

Group 1 is the highest, reserved for things like smoking, asbestos, alcohol and so on. It means that there’s extremely strong evidence that the thing in question causes cancer.

Group 2A includes things that are “probably carcinogenic to humans”. Here, the evidence is “limited” in humans, but “sufficient” from animal studies.

Group 2B – this is the one that mobile phones now fall under – means something is “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. It means there is “limited evidence” that something causes cancer in people, and even the evidence from animal studies is “less than sufficient”. Group 2B means that there is some evidence for a risk but it’s not that convincing. This group ends up being a bit of a catch-all category, and includes everything from carpentry to chloroform.

So if you’ve been hearing a load of sensationalistic crap around this issue, you can stop hyperventilating and take solace in the fact that you’ll probably get cancer, but from something else, like the high-voltage power-lines you’re living under.

[Source : boingboing]