Meta-analysis refutes cell phone brain tumor link
by admin on 07/07/11 at 1:20 am
Ben Hirschler of the Reuters London desk reports that despite recent articles suggesting a link between cell phone use and cancer and the recent recommendation by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that cell phones be classified as possibly carcinogenic, a meta-analysis released July 1, found no such association. A major review of previously published research by a committee of experts from Britain, the United States and Sweden concluded there was no convincing evidence of any cancer connection. It also found a lack of established biological mechanisms by which radio signals from mobile phones might trigger tumors.
Researchers analyzed studies going back as far as 20 years, and found no hard science linking cell phone usage to brain tumors. Reuters quotes lead study author Dr. Anthony Swerdlow from Britain’s Institute of Cancer Research as saying the IARC members “were trying to classify the risk according to a pre-set classification system.”
“Although there remains some uncertainty, the trend in the accumulating evidence is increasingly against the hypothesis that mobile phone use can cause brain tumors in adults,” the experts wrote in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
The latest paper comes just two months after the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) decided cellphone use should be classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” Anthony Swerdlow of Britain’s Institute of Cancer Research, who led the new review, told Reuters the two positions were not necessarily contradictory, since the IARC needed to put mobile phones into a pre-defined risk category. “We are trying to say in plain English what we believe the relationship is. They (IARC) were trying to classify the risk according to a pre-set classification system,” Swerdlow said.
Swerdlow is chairman of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection’s Standing Committee on Epidemiology. The commission is the international body, recognized by the WHO, that constructs guidelines for exposure limits for non-ionizing radiation.
Since mobile phones have become such a key part of daily life — used by many for websurfing as well as talking — industry experts say a health threat is unlikely to stop people using them. Even so, I’m playing it safe and using the hands free option.
