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Recently, the National Institutes of Health released a study showing that using a cell phone changes the chemistry inside your brain. 

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What if it does more than just that? Well, we warn you now: there are no answers yet. 

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But as 360 MD Sanjay Gupta found out, there are serious people asking life-and-death questions.

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If you've ever put a cell phone to your ear, you should listen to what neurosurgeon Dr. Keith Black has to say.

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There's no way to say that cell phone use is safe. I think that the public has a right to know that there could be a potential risk. 

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The public generally assumes that if one is selling something on the market, that we have had assurances that that device is safe.

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To be clear, 

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Dr. Black's message is at odds with headlines from the largest international study on cell phones and cancer. 

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Their conclusion: little or no evidence cell phones are associated with brain tumors.

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But if you look just one layer deeper into the appendix of that same study, you'll see something unsettling. 

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Turns out participants in the study who use a cell phone for ten years or more had double the rate of brain glioma, 

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a type of tumor.

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And keep in mind: cell phone use in the United States has only been popular for around 15 years. 

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Back in 1996, there were 34 million cell phone users; today, nearly 300 million in use, according to industry figures.

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Environmental factors take decades to see their effect, not a few years.

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The FCC requires all cell phones emit below 1.6 watts per kilogram of radiation.

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In order to test for that, scientists here try and mimic the human brain with salt, sugar, and water.

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Let me show you precisely how they do this test. 

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This is a model. This is supposed to approximate the human skull, an adult male. 

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This is my phone that we've actually attached there. It's connected at the angle that most people would speak with.

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And inside over here -- very important -- this bubbly liquid inside, that's what represents liquid brain.

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What's gonna happen is the phone is making a call. 

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After a period of time, this device is going to come over here and start to measure radiation at all sorts of different points in the brain. 

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After that, they're going to take all of those numbers, basically put [them] on a computer screen, and tell us where the hot spots are and just how high the levels got.

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My cell phone measured within FCC limits. But the whole process was, well, surprisingly low-tech. 

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And what about different size skulls or children?

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In children, their skull is thinner, their scalp is thinner so the microwave radiation can penetrate deeper into the brain of children and young adults. 

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And their cells are dividing at a much faster rate, so the impact of the microwave radiation can be much larger.

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And here's something else that might surprise you: 

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the cell manufacturers themselves actually advise against putting the cell phone right next to your head or really anywhere on your body.

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Take a look, for example, with the iPhone 4. The safety instructions specifically say, 

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"When using the iPhone near your body for voice calls, keep it at least 15 millimeters or five-eighths of an inch away from your body."

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The type of radiation coming out of your cell phone is called non-ionizing. It's not like an X-ray but more like a very low-powered microwave oven.

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What microwave radiation does, in the most simplistic term, is very similar to what happens to your food when you put your food in a microwave oven. 

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It's essentially cooking the brain.