A DEFINITIVE assessment of whether cellphones pose a risk of brain cancer to their users should be put on hold, campaigners are claiming.
The mainstream view is that there is no evidence for any such risk. But pressure groups want the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to delay a decision on the issue. They say that only half the data from the 13-country Interphone study of brain cancer and cellphone use, collected in 2004, has been published. The IARC is due to decide the issue at a meeting in Lyon, France, which finishes next week.
Data issued last year showed no evidence of any major risk of cancer from cellphone use. However, the campaigners say that Interphone data from individual countries and on other types of cancer, such as those of the parotid gland, has not yet been published or taken into account in establishing overall risks.
“It’s irresponsible not to publish it all,” says Alasdair Philips of the lobby group Powerwatch UK, who is a co-signatory of a letter organised by the International EMF Alliance in Oslo, Norway, calling for the decision to be postponed. “We’re not looking for a mobile phone ban, but we should have much more sensible guidelines on usage,” Philips says.
We’re not looking for a mobile phone ban, but we should have more sensible guidelines on usage
The IARC says that all necessary Interphone brain-cancer data was published. “Interphone was designed as a multi-country study to provide sufficient statistical power, so the single-country analyses requested by the EMF Alliance are not warranted,” IARC spokesman Nicolas Gaudin says.
Some animal studies suggest that cellphone radiation can damage cells. Nesrin Seyhan at Gazi University in Ankara, Turkey, showed that it could damage DNA in rabbits and their offspring. “We found significantly elevated patterns of damage in exposed compared to non-exposed animals, including DNA modification and other accepted biomarkers of increased risk of cancer,” she says (General Physiology and Biophysics, DOI: 10.4149/gpb_2010_01_59).
Lukas Margaritis of the University of Athens, Greece, says cellphone radiation also impairs short-term memory in mice (Pathophysiology, DOI: 10.1016/j.pathophys.2010.11.001). Whether these studies translate to humans has yet to be determined.
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