Flutterby™! : Cell phones and cancer

You've seen all the "OMG! UN says cell phones cause cancer!" headlines. And then there's the other side: the CTIA Statement on the IARC Working Group Categorization of Mobile Phone Use points out that:

IARC conducts numerous reviews and in the past has given the same score to, for example, pickled vegetables and coffee.

Forbes: Matthew Herper: Why You Still Shouldn’t Worry About Cellphones And Cancer:

Now, 96% of the U.S. population, or about 300 million people, have cellphones. If everyone’s risk of glioma went up 40% as a result of cellphone use, the number of gliomas in the U.S. would increase by 8,000. That’s a one in 40,000 increase in each person’s risk of glioma, which still isn’t very big.

But the study the WHO is citing only showed the 40% increase in the 10% of people who used cellphones most. I don’t know how many people in the U.S. would now fall into this group, but we’d be talking about maybe hundreds of cases spread out over the whole U.S. population.

The whole thing is worth reading, especially as he compares this to the risk of throat cancer from HPV...