Many of the corporate defendants declined to comment, saying their
legal departments had not seen the suits.
Verizon spokeswoman Nancy Stark noted that safety standards for
cellular phones are set by the Federal Communications Commission and the
Food and Drug Administration. "The FDA has stated that the available
scientific data doesn't indicate any adverse health effects," she said.
The lawsuits contend that wireless handsets held to the temporal lobe
of the brain emit microwave radiation at levels capable of damaging DNA,
altering cell function and affecting basic brain activity.
But rather than claiming actual injuries, the suits demand money to pay
for headsets that could mitigate exposure to allegedly damaging radiation.
They also seek unspecified punitive damage.
Previous cases dismissed
The $53 billion wireless telephone
industry denies that its products pose any danger to its 113 million U.S.
customers. There are an estimated 625 million cell phone users worldwide.
The industry already has been subject to more than a dozen liability
lawsuits filed in the United States, China and other parts of the world
since the early 1990s. Most cases have been dismissed, and none has gone
to trial.
Studies published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine and
the American Medical Association have found no evidence that cell phones
cause brain tumors in the people who use them.
But previous lawsuits claim the ill-health effects of radio frequency
radiation (RFR) have been recognized by scientists since the early 1960s.
"It was equally known in the scientific and medical community by that
time that an antenna is the most efficient means of depositing RFR into
the human body and penetrating human tissue, and that the temporal lobe of
the brain was the most sensitive area of the body," a Maryland lawsuit
says.
The complaint said the industry has acted to "suppress, discredit
and/or minimize this emerging science...to ensure that they would be free
to manufacture and mass market wireless hand-held telephones to the
consuming public, free from the constraints of any reasonable and
necessary safety standards."
Story
Copyright © 2001 Reuters
Limited. All rights reserved.
