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Adding new fuel to the debate over
cell phone safety, three European research groups in separate
studies have found an increased risk of brain tumors in people who
have used the phones for 10 years or more.
Two of the studies found a correlation between the tumor's location
and the side of the head where people reported they held the phone.
One also suggests the greatest risk is in people who began using the
phones before age 20, but researchers said the study group was small
and more research should be done.
Cell phone Radiation
studies
Two of the studies, one in England and one in Germany, are part of
the 13-nation Interphone Study, an effort sanctioned by the World
Health Organization to assess possible health risks from the
radiation emitted by cell phones.
Both studies found an increased risk of glioma, an often deadly
brain cancer, in people who had used cell phones 10 years or more.
An earlier Interphone study, reported in October 2004 by researchers
at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, found an increased risk for a
non-cancerous brain tumor called acoustic neuroma after 10 years of
cell phone use, but not for glioma. "When you put the three large
Interphone results together -- the German, English and Swedish --
they tell a story, and it begs for attention," said Louis Slesin,
publisher of Microwave News, who has been reporting on the health
effects of such radiation for two decades.
John Walls, vice president of public affairs for CTIA, The Wireless
Association, a cell phone industry trade group in Washington, D.C.,
said the increase in glioma in people who had used the phones more
than 10 years was "statistically insignificant," and said there is
no cause for concern.
The German study, conducted by Joachim Schuz and colleagues at the
University of Mainz, was published online by the American Journal of
Epidemiology. The researchers compared a group of 749 brain tumor
patients with 1,494 similar people who had not used cell phones and
found a doubling of the risk of gliomas after 10 years of use.
They said numbers of people in the study who had used the phones for
10 years was small, and the findings need to be confirmed by other
studies.
The British researchers compared a group of 966 brain tumor patients
with a group of 1,716 healthy patients who had not used cell phones.
They found a 20 percent increase in cancers among long-term users,
but no overall increased risk in people who used cell phones.
The study, funded largely by the cell phone industry and published
online by the British Medical Journal, found a significantly
increased risk for tumors that developed on the same side of the
head where patients said they most often held the phone. But lead
researcher Patricia McKinney said that finding probably was due to
many patients not accurately recalling which ear they'd used most of
the time.
Critics said conclusions drawn by the researchers were "highly
misleading" and might give cell phone users a false sense of
security.
George Carlo, who headed the American cell phone industry's 1990s
research program, said the findings indicate a 24 percent increase
in tumors among people who used the phone on the same side as the
tumor.
Alasdair Philips, director of Powerwatch, an independent watchdog
group in England, also said the claim of no association of risk is
unjustified because the study excluded half the people who developed
gliomas because they died before they could be interviewed.
McKinney, an epidemiologist at the Leeds Institute of Genetics,
Health and Therapeutics, said "we have no reason to believe the
findings were affected by the [exclusion of half the cases]."
In an e-mail to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, she defended the
decision to discount the high number of cases reported on the same
side of the head where the phone was held.
A third study, in the February edition of International Journal of
Oncology, found an increased risk of acoustic neuromas in long-term
users. Dr. Lennart Hardell and colleagues at Orebro University in
Sweden analyzed the cases of 1,254 people diagnosed with benign
brain tumors between 1997 and 2003, and compared them with a similar
group of 2,162 people who had not used cell phones.
They found that people who used analog cell phones starting 15 years
before diagnosis developed acoustic neuromas at a rate almost four
times higher than the comparison group.
Walls, of the CTIA, said he had not seen the Swedish study, but
questioned the validity of the findings and the researchers' study
design.
An analysis late last year by Dr. Henry Lai, who heads the
Bioelectromagnetics Research Laboratory at the University of
Washington in Seattle, said of 271 laboratory or clinical studies
done in recent years, about 60 percent have shown a biological
effect in cells or animals exposed to radio frequency radiation.
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