Can Carrying My Cell Phone in My Bra Put Me at Risk for Breast Cancer? (0:54)
There is no proof that cell phones cause cancer, but there is clinical evidence that in some circumstances, storing a cell phone in your bra could lead to breast cancer. Watch breast cancer surgeon John West, MD, explain the evidence and his opinion.
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Well, there's no proof that cell phones will cause any kind of cancer, but we have clinical evidence that particularly young women who use their cell phone for prolonged periods of time develop a very unusual form of cancer, and that my conclusion in reviewing these cases is that, yes in certain circumstances cellphones can cause breast cancer.
So what's so impressive about this is that the cancers occur right underneath the skin where the cell phone was in contact with the breast, and there's multiple, both invasive and non-invasive cancers. And this pattern, and this distribution is extremely unusual, and the very young age, these two 21-year olds, and we know there is more out there that we hear from, but we don't have all the data on, but they developed this unusual pattern of multiple invasive and non-invasive cancers, roughly the same distribution of the cell phone, in the area where the cell phone was placed in direct contact with the breast.
John West, MD is surgical director of Breastlink, a network of breast cancer centers, and Co-Founder/Chairman of the Board of the BeAware Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to early detection and prevention of breast cancer.
