Children who use mobile phones are 'five times more likely to develop brain tumours'

Children who use mobile phones are five times more likely to develop brain tumours, research has suggested.

Slowly the evidence is beginning to trickle in. Unfortunately the really solid proof may be decades in the making as it takes many years for disease to develop. If cell phone exposure increases brain tumour risk by a factor of 5, then how much, if any, does the constant exposure to cell antennas increase the risk?


By Daniel MartinLast updated at 8:33 PM on 21st


A study suggests that children who use mobile phones are five times more likely to develop a type of brain tumour.

Children who use mobile phones are five times more likely to develop a type of brain tumour, research has suggested.

The Swedish study indicated that under-16s are more at risk of radiation from mobile phones because their brains and nervous systems are still developing.

Because their heads are smaller and their skulls are thinner the radiation penetrates deeper into their brains, it is believed.

After presenting their findings, the scientists said that children under 12 should only use mobiles for emergencies.

They added that teenagers should use hands-free devices and try to restrict themselves to texting.

But other researchers have cast doubt on the findings - saying that mobiles have not been on the market long enough to test accurately the risks associated with them.

Around 90 per cent of under-16s in Britain have a mobile phone as do 40 per cent of primary school children.

The Swedish research was reported at a conference on mobile phones and health.

It was held at London's Royal Society by the Radiation Research Trust, an independent organisation campaigning for further research into the possible dangers of electromagnetic radiation.

One major finding of the study was that the earlier a person started using a mobile phone, the higher the risk of developing a tumour.

Professor Lennart Hardell, of the University Hospital in Orebro, Sweden, said: 'People who started mobile phone use before the age of 20 had a more than five-foldincrease in glioma.'

This is a cancer of the glial cells which support the central nervous system. About half of all primary brain tumours are gliomas, according to Cancer Research.

Professor Hardell said that home cordless phones were almost as risky as mobile phones, with youngsters using them four times as likely to develop glioma.

Those who started using a mobile phone before the age of 20 also increased the risk by five times of getting an acoustic neuroma.

These are benign tumours which do not cause cancer. Nevertheless, they can damage the auditory nerve and cause deafness.

The researchers said that those who started using their mobiles in their 20s were 50 per cent more likely to contract glioma and twice as likely to get acoustic neuromas.

Professor Hardell said: 'This is a warning sign. It is very worrying. We should be taking precautions.'

The research led to calls from other scientists to look again at the potential risks of mobile phone use.

David Carpenter, of the State University of New York, said: 'Children are spending significant time on mobile phones.

'We may be facing a public health crisis in an epidemic of brain cancers as a result of mobile phone use.'

However other scientists expressed doubts about the Swedish research.

One of the problems with studying the effects of mobile phone radiation is that it can take years for cancers to develop - perhaps much longer than mobile phones have so far been generally available.

Britain is carrying out its own research involving 90,000 people, called the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme.

Professor David Coggon, who is working on the study, said: 'It looks frightening to see a five-fold increase in cancer among people who started use in childhood.'

But he added that he would be 'extremely surprised' if the risk were shown to be that high once the evidence was in.

Find this story at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1058989/Children-use-mobile-phones-times-likely-develop-brain-tumours.html

Experts Revive Debate Over Cellphones and Cancer

Do not hold a cell phone to your ear and do not, as some doctors in the NYT article suggest, use an earpiece. An earpiece actually intensifies the signal. Some earpieces have a wire which transitions into an air tube, thus conducting the sound over air waves. This is better than using a regualr wire.

The best cell phone use is minimal contact using the speakerphone.

An Israeli study showed definitively that cell phone radiation causes disruption in cellular DNA which in time could be cancer forming.

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/10/brief_cellphone.html


June 3, 2008 NYT

Well

Experts Revive Debate Over Cellphones and Cancer

By TARA PARKER-POPE

What do brain surgeons know about cellphone safety that the rest of us don’t?
Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cellphones next to their ears. “I think the safe practice,” said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, “is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away from your brain.”
Dr. Vini Khurana, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Australian National University who is an outspoken critic of cellphones, said: “I use it on the speaker-phone mode. I do not hold it to my ear.” And CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital, said that like Dr. Black he used an earpiece.
Along with Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s recent diagnosis of a glioma, a type of tumor that critics have long associated with cellphone use, the doctors’ remarks have helped reignite a long-simmering debate about cellphones and cancer.
That supposed link has been largely dismissed by many experts, including the American Cancer Society. The theory that cellphones cause brain tumors “defies credulity,” said Dr. Eugene Flamm, chairman of neurosurgery at Montefiore Medical Center.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, three large epidemiology studies since 2000 have shown no harmful effects. CTIA — the Wireless Association, the leading industry trade group, said in a statement, “The overwhelming majority of studies that have been published in scientific journals around the globe show that wireless phones do not pose a health risk.”
The F.D.A. notes, however, that the average period of phone use in the studies it cites was about three years, so the research doesn’t answer questions about long-term exposures. Critics say many studies are flawed for that reason, and also because they do not distinguish between casual and heavy use.
Cellphones emit non-ionizing radiation, waves of energy that are too weak to break chemical bonds or to set off the DNA damage known to cause cancer. There is no known biological mechanism to explain how non-ionizing radiation might lead to cancer.
But researchers who have raised concerns say that just because science can’t explain the mechanism doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. Concerns have focused on the heat generated by cellphones and the fact that the radio frequencies are absorbed mostly by the head and neck. In recent studies that suggest a risk, the tumors tend to occur on the same side of the head where the patient typically holds the phone.
Like most research on the subject, the studies are observational, showing only an association between cellphone use and cancer, not a causal relationship. The most important of these studies is called Interphone, a vast research effort in 13 countries, including Canada, Israel and several in Europe.
Some of the research suggests a link between cellphone use and three types of tumors: glioma; cancer of the parotid, a salivary gland near the ear; and acoustic neuroma, a tumor that essentially occurs where the ear meets the brain. All these cancers are rare, so even if cellphone use does increase risk, the risk is still very low.
Last year, The American Journal of Epidemiology published data from Israel finding a 58 percent higher risk of parotid gland tumors among heavy cellphone users. Also last year, a Swedish analysis of 16 studies in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine showed a doubling of risk for acoustic neuroma and glioma after 10 years of heavy cellphone use.
“What we’re seeing is suggestions in epidemiological studies that have looked at people using phones for 10 or more years,” says Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News, an industry publication that tracks the research. “There are some very disconcerting findings that suggest a problem, although it’s much too early to reach a conclusive view.”
Some doctors say the real concern is not older cellphone users, who began using phones as adults, but children who are beginning to use phones today and face a lifetime of exposure.
“More and more kids are using cellphones,” said Dr. Paul J. Rosch, clinical professor of medicine and psychiatry at New York Medical College. “They may be much more affected. Their brains are growing rapidly, and their skulls are thinner.”
For people who are concerned about any possible risk, a simple solution is to use a headset. Of course, that option isn’t always convenient, and some critics have raised worries about wireless devices like the Bluetooth that essentially place a transmitter in the ear.
The fear is that even if the individual risk of using a cellphone is low, with three billion users worldwide, even a minuscule risk would translate into a major public health concern.
“We cannot say with any certainty that cellphones are either safe or not safe,” Dr. Black said on CNN. “My concern is that with the widespread use of cellphones, the worst scenario would be that we get the definitive study 10 years from now, and we find out there is a correlation.”
well@nytimes.com
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company