FIVE
Do mobile phones really cause cancer?
‘I never thought I’d say this in my life, but cell phones are probably worse than cigarettes for overall health.’
—Dr Jack Kruse
DO mobile phones cause cancer? The answer is – probably, if the exposure is close enough, long enough and of sufficient magnitude.65
For years, the safety of mobile phones has been debated. On one hand, hundreds of studies show that radio frequency levels hundreds of times lower than those in government safety standards cause damage to biological systems. On the other hand, industry executives and government officials have adhered to what is called a ‘thermal paradigm’, claiming that RF radiation is not harmful unless it causes physical burns or shock.
The mobile phone industry and government will tell you that your phone is safe – and we so want to believe them so we can continue our addictive love affair with our phones. But the science suggests otherwise.
In 2009, the Journal of Clinical Oncology published the findings of a team of scientists who reviewed 23 epidemiological studies on the link between cell phone use and cancer. They concluded:
Although as a whole the data varied, among the 10 higher quality studies, we found a harmful association between phone use and tumour risk. The lower quality studies, which failed to meet scientific best practices, were primarily industry funded.
The 13 studies that investigated cell phone use for 10 or more years found a significant harmful association with tumour risk, especially brain tumours, giving us ample reason for concern about long-term use.66
Professor Chapman’s study
A 2016 study by Professor Simon Chapman, published by Cancer Epidemiology,67 on the other hand, claims to have proven that mobile phones do not cause brain cancer. The study analysed the 29-year history of mobile phone use in Australia and compared it with the incidences of brain cancer reported to the cancer registry. There are a couple of reasons why I believe Professor Chapman’s conclusion is overstated.
First of all, the study grouped more than 200 different types of brain cancer into one bundle – when glioma (tumours of the glial cells in the brain) is the type of brain cancer associated with mobile phone use and constitutes about 30 per cent of all brain cancers. Interestingly, most glioma tumours occur in precisely the parts of the brain that absorb most of the microwave radiation emitted or received by phones.
Secondly, proportionally few Australians were heavy users of mobile phones 30 years ago. It’s only in the last few years that phones have become ubiquitous and affordable, with the heaviest use occurring in relatively young people. If you’re interested in the ongoing arguments for and against Professor Chapman’s study, visit www.betweenrockandhardplace.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/professor-simon-chapman-responds.
If you look at the science on mobile phones and the link with brain cancer, it is quite compelling … we know that [ionising] radiation causes cancer, but it takes about ten years for it to develop, so we know that EMR (electromagnetic radiation) [from phones] is going to take at least ten years to create brain tumours and possibly longer – fifteen, twenty years.68
—Dr Charlie Teo, world-renowned Australian neurosurgeon
The US National Toxicology Program study
A recently completed two-year, $25 million study by the US National Toxicology Program (NTP) on rats exposed to GSM or CDMA mobile phone signals has shown statistically significant increases in two types of cancer:
None of these tumours were found in the unexposed rats.
The exposures were carefully conducted in such a way that heating would not be a contributing factor. The types of cells that became cancerous in the rats were the identical types that have been shown to develop into tumours in human epidemiological studies. The study is the largest of its kind to date and has undergone extensive reviews – and the consensus is that there’s a carcinogenic effect from mobile phone radiation:
This study should put an end to those who doubt the capacity of non-thermal levels of wireless radiation to cause biological effects including cancer. The study results clearly show that cell phone radiation can cause adverse health effects. The counter argument has no validity.
—Ronald Melnick, PhD, former lead scientist on the study69
The US Air Force study
The NTP study wasn’t, of course, the first randomised controlled trial to find that exposure to non-thermal levels of microwave radiation can cause cancer in rats. A US Air Force study conducted from 1980 to 1982, which was documented in a series of nine technical reports and later published in the peer-reviewed journal Bioelectromagnetics,70 found that 18 per cent of 100 male rats exposed to low-intensity RF–EMF developed cancer.
CTIA research
Even mobile phone industry research in the 1990s showed that mobiles caused brain tumours. Dr George Carlo was the leader of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association’s (CTIA) $25 million research project, which employed 200 scientists. Dr Carlo held three successive meetings in February 1999: one with the executives of the CTIA; the second with the Food and Drug Administration’s Interagency Working Group, which was chartered with determining the safety of cell phones; and the third with the CTIA Board of Directors. At each meeting, he presented the results of CTIA’s own studies. Among the findings Dr Carlo presented were:
The CTIA withdrew funding for the research. The research was terminated because long-term studies were showing leakage of the blood-brain barrier and micronuclei (broken DNA) in blood cells.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer
For a week in May 2011, a Working Group of 31 scientists met at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, to evaluate the carcinogenic effect on humans of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields from mobile phones and other devices. They classified these fields in Group 2B, ‘possibly carcinogenic’.
Some researchers, like Dr Devra Davis, now feel the scientific evidence is sufficient to classify mobile phone radiation in Group 2A, as a ‘probable’ human carcinogen. Others like Dr Lennart Hardell advocate for Group 1 ‘carcinogenic’ classification as the IARC Group 1 criteria for increased risk of glioma and acoustic neuroma has been fulfilled.72
How many sick or dead people does it take to constitute sufficient proof?
—Professor Devra Davis, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute
Is it a risk worth taking?
As Dr Carlo states in his 2002 book Cell Phones: invisible hazards in the wireless age: an insider’s alarming discoveries about cancer and genetic damage:
The big picture is disturbingly clear. There is a definite risk that the radiation plume that emanates from a cell phone antenna can cause cancer and other health problems. It is a risk that must be seen and understood by all who use cell phones so they can take all the appropriate and available steps to protect themselves and especially to protect young children whose skulls are still growing and who are the most vulnerable to the risks of radiation.
The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) is wisely hedging its bets. Although they maintain a staunch stance on the minimal (if any) effects of harmful EMFs, they recommend taking precautions to minimise unnecessary exposure, especially to children (for details, see Part 3).
Here’s the rub. There are now almost as many mobile phone subscriptions in the world as there are people – over seven billion in use!73 They are everywhere. And almost every user carries their mobile phones with them; many even take them to bed.
The debate continues, but I would really like to see the naysayers enrol their kids as the test subjects for the next longitudinal study on the effects of mobile phones!
Footnotes
65 Christopher J. Portier, Wendy L. Leonard, 2016, Do Cellphones Cause Cancer? Probably, but it’s Complicated, Scientific American Blog.
66 Joel Moskowitz, 2010, Government Must Inform US of Cell Phone Risk, San Francisco Chronicle.
67 Chapman S, Azizi L, Luo Q, Sitas F, 2016, Has the incidence of brain cancer risen in Australia since the introduction of mobile phones 29 years ago? Cancer Epidemiology.
68 Enough Rope, ABC TV, 2008.
69 Environmental Health Trust, NIH National Toxicology Program Cell Phone Radiofrequency Radiation Study, <www.ehtrust.org/cell-phone-radiofrequency-radiation-study/>
70 C. K. Chou, et al, 1992, Long-Term, Low-Level Microwave Irradiation of Rats, Bioelectromagnetics 13, p. 469-496.
71 Dr. George Carlo and Martin Schram, 2001, Cell Phones, Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age, An Insiders Alarming Discoveries About Cancer and Genetic Damage, Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York.
72 Lennart Hardell, 2014, Moving radiofrequency radiation from Group 2B to 1 as a human carcinogen, https://lennarthardellenglish.wordpress.com/2014/12/08/moving-radiofrequency-radiation-from-group-2b-to-1-as-a-human-carcinogen/
73 http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx.