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The Safety Of Mobile Phone Usage

The Safety Of Mobile Phone Usage

Yet another study on the effects of mobile phones has been released: this time, saying that they’re basically safe. There really seems to be no consistency, with earlier studies showing a possible connection. It really seems like it would be wise not to read too much into studies like these, at least in a literal sense. One very important thing is that there’s only really 10 years of data, and that’s not really enough to be completely thorough, so we might be skeptical of studies claiming no effect (the effects might take longer than 10 years to appear). But at least on the timescale we have, if there are as many studies aren’t finding affects as not, then that puts some of the results of the affirmative studies in doubt. Basically, I don’t think we have enough data to be sure, and we shouldn’t panic about mobile phones. But nor should be be blaze. It’s probably sensible not to use a mobile phone excessively, or to use a hands free kit (although some of them have been reported to have even greater effects!)

In the end, the leading cause of death is birth (boom boom!) and it seems pretty much everything is carciogenic in some form or another. Even french fries are getting a bad rap, but everyone’s going to eat them regardless, right? So for the fabulous convenience that mobile phones provide, I, personally, would probably accept some small increased cancer risk. Although, I admit, that that’s probably easy to say when there’s no proven link. I’m a notoriously self-preserving kind of guy…heck, I’ve never broken a bone!

In other news, I’ve been having hard drive woes – trying to upgrade my Powerbook to Tiger (their new operating system) has revealed various hard disk errors. Basically, I think I’m going to have to reformat the whole lot and reinstall. Not great, but it may be nice to have a clean installation of Tiger. I’ve spent the last two days trying to find out if that’s my only/best option, and how best to backup my data. *sigh* It’s going to be a long road to recovery, I think, not least of all re-downloading and re-installing all my applications. So if my posts are a little less forthcoming over the coming days, my apologies.

What do you think?

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