Discarded Mobile Phones Create an Avalanche of Toxic E-Waste

Thousands of tons of electronic waste hit landfills each year as users upgrade to new mobile phones and discard the old ones.According to British newspaper The Independent, there are already 11,000 tons of unused cellular phones in the United Kingdom that have not yet been disposed of. Most of these phones will eventually be discarded, along with old laptops, portable music players and video game consoles. These electronic products are made with highly toxic metals and other chemicals that leach into the earth when discarded.

About 100 million people

According to Thomsen, about 100 million people upgrade to new phones each year in Europe alone, even though the average handset has a life of 5 years.

To encourage phone reuse, Green Mobile asks new customers to keep using their old handset and rewards them with a lower rate than can be offered by companies that subsidize new phones each year.

Recycled phones

The prevalence of recycled phones is expected to increase as the problem of e-waste enters the public consciousness and stricter regulations force more companies to tackle the problem. ABI Research estimates that these factors, in addition to shorter handset replacement cycles and a greater demand for cheaper phones will cause the recycled handset market to be worth $3 billion by 2012, with recycled phone shipments numbering above 100 million.

Learn more:

 http://www.naturalnews.com/023598_mobile_phones_toxic_phone.html

Mobile phones boost brain tumor risk by up to 270 percent on side of brain where phone is held

Using a cell phone regularly – even a modern one – raises the risk of developing a brain tumor for many users, a new Finnish study published online in the International Journal of Cancer. The study, done by a collection of researchers from many universities and led by Anna Lahkola of the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Finland, found firm corollary evidence that using a cell phone causes the risk of getting a brain tumor called a glioma to rise by 40 to 270 percent on the side of the head preferred for using the phone.

What you need to know

• Mobile phone manufacturers have tried to suppress the dangers of mobile phones by funding their own distorted research that concludes the phones are perfectly safe.

• All people -- but children and teens especially -- should be warned against using mobile phones due to the increased risk of brain tumors.

What you need to know - Conventional View

• The study compared 1,521 cellular phone users who received a glioma to 3,301 control participants without tumors.

• For people who have used a modern cellular phone for more than 2000 hours in their lifetime, the risk of getting a brain tumor rose by 270 percent.

• The study is considered the second that firmly correlates cell phone usage with an increased risk of developing certain brain tumors.

• The risk was highest among people under the age of 20.

• Older-style analog cell phones already have been shown as a source of brain tumors, but even with the development of digital cellular phones, the risk is still there.

• According to a scientist associated with the web site foodconsumer.org, the study results should not make readers assume that ten years of cell phone use will correlate to an immediate tumor, but that the tumor will show up later than that.

Bottom line

• Cell phone usage is shown to increase your risk of a brain tumor.

There's a lot of debate today about the safety of using cell phones while driving. Statistics show that those who use cell phones while driving cause a much greater percentage of accidents than those who avoid using their cell phones. And the studies have shown that it's not just the physical coordination required to punch numbers into the cell phone while you're trying to work the vehicle that causes accidents; it's actually the lack of attention resulting from driving and talking on the cell phone at the same time. It seems that when you're distracted, you're more likely to cause accidents.

Banning mobile phones

So if we're going to go through the trouble of banning mobile phones in automobiles out of concern for driver safety, I think we should go all the way and just ban drivers with low cognitive function and slow reaction time. Why isn't reaction time one of the tests when you go get your license renewed? When someone sees a red light, shouldn't they be required to respond in one second or less? Isn't someone who takes longer than one second to respond to a red light and apply pressure to the brake pedal a danger to other drivers, and aren't slow people in fact far more dangerous than drivers who carry cell phones? I think they are. I mean, if we're going to get serious about driver safety and ban cell phones, we should ban anyone who's taking a great number of prescription drugs from driving.

Public safety

And in terms of real dangers to public safety, cell phones don't even come close to the dangers posed by prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs. Approximately 40% of all drivers are on at least one drug at all times, and if you include nicotine and caffeine, that number goes up to around 70%. The abuse of drugs is the root cause of the vast majority of automobile accidents.

Learn more:

Click on the link: http://www.naturalnews.com/004823_driver_safety_public.html