iPhoneTeeny-weeny warning labels cropping up on the iPhone and BlackBerry that warn you to keep the cell phones away from a pregnant woman's belly and that of teenage girls are getting the companies plenty of flack for not being big and blatant enough.

But excuse us for looking at the bigger picture here.

Every other day The Stir seems to get a new PR pitch for an app that's designed to make a mama's life amazing. And now the smartphone industry is telling us we're screwing up our unborn fetuses one development milestone tracker at a time?

The new iPhone warnings apparently tell you to keep the phone 15 mm away from the body, and the fine print on the BlackBerry specifies keeping an inch of space from a pregnant woman's stomach or that of a teenage girl.

It backs up studies over the years that have claimed cell phone radiation increases the risk of tumor growth. And it even lends credence to the much discredited study that talking on your cell phone while pregnant will result in giving birth to a child who will suffer hyperactivity and difficulties with conduct, emotional control, and relationships by the time they start school.

If the industry thinks any of this stuff is true, there has to be something to it, right? It's their jobs, after all, to sell us these phones.

Before you start freaking -- and delete the Pimp My Ultrasound app that lets you add a pink hat and glasses to your sonogram to share with the girls -- the folks at Powerwatch, a non-profit watchdog of the cell phone industry, told the Daily Mail that the fetus and uterus are largely protected by the body's trunk. They advise against carrying the phones in a bag around your mid-section during the first six crucial months of fetal development, but they're more concerned about the breasts, eyes, and testicles.

Of course, if you're truly freaked about this, there's one truly good reason to kick the habit: the USDA's latest assessment of how much it will cost to raise a child to age 18 is $286,050. And Americans have the second highest cell phone bills in the world.

Looks like you don't need that Pimp the Ultrasound app after all.

 

Image via Yutaka Tsutano/Flickr