Italian justice has recognized the link between the brain tumor of an employee and the intensive use of the telephone in the course of his duties.
Is the cell phone slowly destroying the employees who use it intensively? In Italy, justice has in any case recognized the damage of a worker suffering from a benign brain tumor. The 57-year-old man had taken to court and questioned the excessive use of the telephone in the course of his duties.
The judgment pronounced by the court of Ivrea (North), made public this Thursday, effectively admitted the existence of a link between the appearance of a neuroma in this employee forced to use his mobile phone between three and four hours a day for 15 years.
Deaf
This “judgment recognizes the causal link between inappropriate use of the cell phone and a brain tumor,” said the plaintiff’s lawyers, quoted by AFP. We now believe that it is necessary to reflect on this problem and take appropriate measures ”.
The employee began to experience symptoms of his illness in 2010 as a permanent sensation of a blocked ear before he was diagnosed with atrial neuroma. It is a benign tumor, which nevertheless left him disabled. He thus had to undergo an ablation of the acoustic nerve and became deaf on the right side, he specified.
The expert appointed by the judge assessed his bodily injury at 23% and ordered the National Institute for Work Accident Insurance (Inail) to pay him a life allowance of 500 euros per month.
Precedents
This is not a first in Italy. Before him, the pathologies of two people were recognized as an occupational disease linked to the excessive use of the telephone. In 2006, in the United States, justice for the first time recognized that the brain tumor of an employee was directly linked to this intensive use.
Since 2011, the waves emitted by cell phones have been considered “possibly carcinogenic” by the World Health Organization, which however calls for new studies, due to lack of consensus.
In France, a Bordeaux study recently highlighted an increased risk of glioma, a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer, linked to excessive use of the cell phone.
The French Public Health agency has put online a website which gathers information on scientific knowledge around the waves emitted by cellphones and on the means of preventing their possible risks. The agency therefore advises to call with a headset and to promote SMS, but also to avoid calling in areas of poor reception, or to move the phone away from your ear just after dialing.
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