France Bans iPhone 12 over Concerns of Excessive Radiation; Experts Analyze Its Potential Harm
After testing revealed that the iPhone 12 produced radiation levels above the EU safety standard, Apple has been ordered to stop selling the device in France.
Additionally, the tech behemoth was warned to either update existing smartphones with fixes or recall every iPhone 12 ever sold in the nation.
The statement has once again rekindled the conversation over the safety of using mobile phones, despite Jean-Noel Barrot, France’s digital minister, playing down concerns that the radiation levels detected constituted a cancer risk.
In the past, the World Health Organization has worked to allay concerns about radiation generated by mobile devices by emphasizing that there is no evidence to support its potential harm to people.
Since the majority of people did not start using mobile phones until the late 1990s, scientists have cautioned that there is little information available about safety issues that may exist in the future.
According to Maria Feychting, a professor of epidemiology at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, “at this time, there is no strong evidence that exposure to electromagnetic fields during mobile phone use is associated with adverse health effects.” Feychting made this statement to sources. However, there are still some uncertainties and further research is needed, especially regarding the higher frequencies that will be used by 5G.’
She further added that: ‘The guidelines are set with considerable safety margins, and health effects are unlikely to occur even if guidelines are somewhat exceeded. However, the safety margins of the guidelines are applied to consider the uncertainty in the scientific knowledge.’
It is worth pointing out that the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is an offshoot of the WHO, has previously claimed that certain radio frequencies at extreme levels are ‘possibly carcinogenic to humans’.
It is important to note that the WHO subsidiary International Agency for Research on Cancer has already asserted that specific radio frequencies at high levels are “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”
This is regarded to be unlikely, though.
Studies have also suggested that mobile phone use may affect fertility and raise the risk of cancer.
In 2014, University of Exeter researchers hypothesized a potential connection between exposure to mobile phones and worse sperm quality.
They claimed that keeping phones in a pocket could have an impact on the quantity and mobility of sperm, but they also acknowledged that the evidence was preliminary.
According to a different study published in 2020, using a mobile phone for even 17 minutes per day over the course of ten years raises the risk of acquiring malignant tumors by up to 60%.
The controversial research conducted by experts from UC Berkeley involved analyzing 46 different studies on the relationship between mobile phone use and health worldwide. According to Joel Moskowitz, one of the researchers involved, their main finding suggests that approximately 1,000 hours of lifetime cellphone use, equivalent to about 17 minutes per day over a period of 10 years, is linked to a significant 60 percent increase in brain cancer.
Nevertheless, Cancer Research UK firmly refutes these claims, asserting that there is no evidence to support such a connection.
