Learn About EMFs

by Eoin Lichen International Herald Tribune 12/16/99

Mobile phones are used by more than 300 million people, who carry them in hip pockets and hold them next to their heads, and they are the subject of scientific studies into possible links to brain cancer.

So far, the studies have revealed a few significant findings but little cause for alarm. The only point about which there is wide agreement is that further research is needed.

Mobile phone antennae emit high-frequency electromagnetic radiation during transmission. Some radiation is absorbed by the outer 1 to 2 centimeters (less than an inch) of bone and brain tissue, slightly heating those tissues. A Swedish study published last year found heating effects, headaches and tingling sensations among mobile phone users. The heating may be harmless; the bigger question is whether there are also biological effects.

While there is no consensus among scientists, more studies are concluding that there are some biological effects. At a workshop at the University of Vienna last year, participants agreed that “biological effects from low-intensity exposures are scientifically established.” They also called for additional research, saying, “The current state of scientific consensus is inadequate to derive reliable exposure standards.”

The mobile phone industry is not persuaded. “We absolutely believe that there is no adverse health effect associated with the use of mobile phones,” said Michael Stocks, head of GSM Association, the organization that represents operators and suppliers of GSM-standard phones.

“Having said that,” he continued, “we do understand that there are concerns, and we do want to be in a position as a community to give categoric medical evidence that there is no health effect associated with mobile phones.”

TWO RECENT studies caused a stir. The first was a Swedish study between 1994 and 1996 of 209 people with newly diagnosed brain tumors, which compared their mobile phone use with that of healthy people.

This epidemiological study, led by Lennart Hardell, associate professor of oncology at the Orebro Medical Center in Sweden, found no discernible difference in phone use between cancer patients and healthy people. But it did find a slight correlation between the location of some tumors and the side of the head on which a mobile phone was used.

Kjell Hansson-Mild, associate professor of medical physics at the National Institute for Working Life in Umea, Sweden, who was involved in the tests, said that among the 74 tumor patients who were phone users, 13 had local tumors in the left or right lobes close to the ears or back of the head. And these tumors were 2.4 times more likely to be on the side on which the user held his phone.

But Mr. Hansson-Mild cautioned that these numbers were statistically small. “We cannot draw any firm conclusion,” he said, adding, “Now we are well on our way with the next part.” This involves studying 1,200 cases, but results are likely to be some years away.

The second study was carried out in the United States and was paid for by a mobile phone industry body, the Wireless Technology Research group. It found a link between mobile phone use and a type of brain tumor called a neurocytoma, which grows inward from the surface of the brain. It compared the phone use of 450 brain cancer patients with 425 healthy controls and found no overall link. But 40 percent of those with neurocytomas had used mobile phones, compared with only 18 percent of the controls.

Again, scientists say the overall numbers are too small to draw firm conclusions.

Perhaps more disturbing than the studies reported so far are allegations that the mobile industry is trying to suppress unfavorable results. In a letter to the March/April edition of Micro Wave News, a newsletter published in New York, Henry Lai and Narendra Singh, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle, complained of a “consistent pattern of chaotic corruption and deception” in the Wireless Technology Research group’s program.

“The WTR program is a disgrace to the American research establishment,” they said, urging an independent research program free from industry control.

Elisabeth Cardis of the International Agency for Research in Cancer, based in Lyon, said a new study being undertaken in 12 countries would investigate phone use among 4,000 cancer patients in order to assess the risk of cancers of the head and neck from mobile phone radiation.

The study is still at the fund-raising stage, she said, and the case studies will take two to three years to collect. It is a “really good study that will answer the question for once and for all,” she said.

So, should the 300 million mobile phone users jettison their phones, or are less radical solutions in sight?