Cell phones pose risks, suit alleges
The industry disputes claims that they endanger users. The suit filed in
Philadelphia seeks class-action status.
By Linda Loyd
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
A Devon man filed a lawsuit in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court yesterday
asserting that the nation's biggest cellular-phone manufacturers and service
providers are making and selling cell phones knowing that they may pose
health risks.
The plaintiff, Francis J. Farina, does not allege that cell phones have
caused him specific health problems. Rather, the lawsuit says the companies
knowingly marketed products that emit radiation and may cause health
problems such as impaired neurological function and chromosome damage.
Farina, 49, a certified public accountant and lawyer, and a cell-phone user
since 1988, according to the lawsuit, declined to be interviewed.
The suit, being handled by Kenneth A. Jacobsen, a lawyer from Media and a
class-action specialist, alleges that makers of cell phones are negligent
because cell phones are not sold with headsets to reduce users' exposure to
radiation, particularly to the head.
Wireless-industry representatives insist that scientific evidence clears
cell phones of any health risk.
Jacobsen wants the case certified a class action, and wants all Pennsylvania
cell-phone users furnished with headsets to mitigate exposure to radiation.
The suit also seeks unspecified punitive damages for the industry's
allegedly marketing dangerous products and failing to inform the public
about possible health risks.
"We aren't alleging brain tumors from the use of cell phones, but that the
radio frequency waves emitted do cause structural changes, chromosomal and
genetic damage," Jacobsen said.
Jacobsen has teamed with Peter G. Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles
baseball team, to bring not only the Pennsylvania case, but also lawsuits
that seek class-action status in state courts in Maryland, New Jersey and
New York. "We are cocounsel on every one of the cases," Jacobsen said.
Angelos, whose law firm won large personal-injury verdicts against
asbestos-makers and the tobacco industry, is lead attorney in another case,
now in federal court in Baltimore, filed by a Maryland neurologist who
contends that his years of cell-phone use caused a malignant brain tumor.
Angelos could not be reached for comment.
The 22 defendants named in the Philadelphia lawsuit include Motorola Inc.,
Nokia Corp., NEC America, and Ericsson Wireless Inc., as well as telephone
carriers Verizon Communications Inc., Sprint PCS, and Nextel Communications
Inc.
Megan Matthews, a spokeswoman for Nokia Corp., said: "There is no available
or credible evidence to suggest the use of cell phones causes any adverse
health effects."
Norman Sandler, director of global strategic issues for Motorola Inc., said:
"We stand behind the judgments of government agencies in the United States
and elsewhere. Numerous scientific expert panels around the world that have
reviewed the research have concluded there is no credible evidence that the
radio signals from mobile phones, or other portable radio devices, pose any
kind of health risks."
A Verizon Wireless spokeswoman, Nancy Stark, said: "The cooking.net">food and Drug
Administration has stated the available science doesn't demonstrate adverse
health effects with the use of wireless phones."
The FDA, which has jurisdiction over radiation-emitting devices, has said
that cell phones do not appear to present a danger based on scientific
literature. But it said more research is needed before it can conclude that
cell phones are completely safe.
The Philadelphia suit quotes the FDA from an October report: "The available
science does not allow us to conclude that mobile phones are absolutely
safe, or that they are unsafe."
Industry representatives point to three recent studies that found no
short-term connection between cell phones and brain cancer: a study of
420,000 Danish cell-phone users published in the Journal of the National
Cancer Institute in February, a National Institute of Health study in the
New England Journal of Medicine of 789 brain tumor patients in January, and
a study of 469 cancer patients reported in the Journal of the American
Medical Association in December.
But those researchers said they were unable to conclude that a long-term
link did not exist, and each of the three studies called for more research.
Experts say it is particularly difficult to predict the long-term effect of
a product that is just two decades old, especially because most of the 100
million U.S. users - and 400 million worldwide - began using cell phones
within the last five years.
The lawsuit contends that researchers first documented health concerns in
the 1920s from radio-frequency radiation, the type of energy emitted by cell
phones, and the defendants "acted to suppress, discredit and/or minimize
this emerging science."
Kenneth R. Foster, a University of Pennsylvania bioengineering professor and
expert on cell-phone radiation, said expert committees and government panels
had sifted through the literature for years. "While there is no clear
evidence of a hazard, the literature is extremely messy and unresolved,"
Foster said. "You can pick up all sorts of open questions and reports of
effects from exposures.
"I would guess a smart lawyer could probably take that pretty far in the
courtroom," he said.

Linda

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