A top Australian neurosurgeon says cell phones may cause more cancer in the near future than smoking or asbestos. Dr. Vini Khurana, who conducted an extensive review of the link between cell phones and brain cancer said using cell phones for at least ten years could more than double the risk of developing deadly brain cancer. Since three times as many people use cell phones as smoke, cell phones will soon emerge as a major killer.

“It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking, and directly concerns all of us, particularly the younger generation, including very young children,” Dr. Khurana wrote.

Dr. Khurana says there has been an increase in brain tumors in people who have used cell phones heavily for a long time on the same side of the head as their “preferred ear” for making calls. He believes it has been difficult to prove a direct link between cell phone usage and brain tumors because a malignant brain tumor might take between ten and twenty years to develop, and the general public hasn’t been using cell phones long enough to effectively study the risk.

That will soon change. “In the years 2008-2012, we will have reached the appropriate length of follow-up time to being to definitely observe the impact of this global technology on brain tumor incidence rates,” Khurana says.