Colorectal Cancer Soaring in Young Adults; Are Smartphones in the Mix? Epidemiologist De-Kun Li Wants To Know

Americans in their 20s are getting more colon and rectal cancer. Those born in 1990 now face four times the risk of developing rectal cancer and twice the risk of colon cancer, compared to those born around 1950, according to the American Cancer Society. Similar patterns are being seen in many other countries. Known risk factors for colorectal cancer include obesity, an unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity. But De-Kun Li, an epidemiologist and veteran EMF researcher, doesn’t think they explain what’s going on. Li offers a different hypothesis: Young people’s habit of carrying their cell phones in the front or back pockets of their jeans. “When placed in trouser pockets, the phones are in the vicinity of the rectum and the distal colon and these are the sites of the largest increases in cancer,” he says.

Li may be onto something. Smartphones on standby mode check in with the network –and transmit RF radiation– more often than previous types of cell phones. And in a pocket, there’s virtually no separation from the body, unlike that assumed in safety testing. How high are the exposures? There’s been so little research, it’s hard to say. Read our latest story here. It may well make you think twice before putting a phone in your pocket again.