Scientists finally agree that your phone won't give you cancer

Cell phone.
(Image credit: iStock.)

Good news for the tech junkies out there: Experts agree that cell phones do not cause cancer. At least, not in humans.

The National Toxicology Program, which studies all kinds of possible causes for disease, has been conducting studies on mice and rats "to help clarify any potential health risks" that might result from the radiation from cell phones. In "the highest of doses for the longest periods of time," cell phone radiation might pose a cancer risk to rats, NBC News reported.

But the rest of us can probably stop worrying about it, because the rodents were exposed to "much greater" levels of radiation, and for longer periods of time, than humans would experience with "even the highest level of cell phone usage," an NTP scientist told NBC News. Beyond that, the studies only showed any type of change in rats; mice did not seem to develop any clear adverse effects from the radiation exposure.

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Dr. Otis Brawley, a physician with the American Cancer Society, told NBC News that these results won't reassure everyone. "The folks who really want cell phones to be harmful are going to say that it's harmful," he explained, but "if there is a harm, it is minimal." Read the full studies here.

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Shivani is the editorial assistant at TheWeek.com and has previously written for StreetEasy and Mic.com. A graduate of the physics and journalism departments at NYU, Shivani currently lives in Brooklyn and spends free time cooking, watching TV, and taking too many selfies.