Are cell phones safe? Researchers still uncertain
WASHINGTON, D.C.--The question over whether cell phones pose a health risk has been debated for years, and researchers say the final answer could still be years away.
Since the wireless industry's early days, there have been fears that cell phones could be harmful to your health. Some 600 studies have been conducted on the health effects of cell phone use, but the results have been conflicting.
Several reputable organizations, including the World Health Organization and the National Cancer Institute, say there's no conclusive evidence that using cell phones can harm your health. Other independent research, meanwhile, indicates a link between health problems and cell phone use. (See also: CNET's Quick Guide: Cell phone radiation levels)
The Interphone study, which began over a decade ago involving 13 countries and has been funded in part by the wireless industry, was supposed to settle the dispute. But the report's publication has been delayed as researchers disagree over how to interpret the data. Some countries have ended up publishing some results on their own. Much of it indicates there is a link between brain tumors and cell phone use of 10 years or more.
As this research becomes public, some well-respected scientists in the fields of cancer research, epidemiology, electrical and computer engineering, and electromagnetic radiation say they see reason for concern, while others say it is much too soon to make judgments.
But one thing they all agree on is that more research is needed.
For three days this week, many of those scientists are gathering at an international conference here to share research and plot the course for further studies to look at the effects of cell phone use and health concerns. Some are also testifying at a Senate hearing on Monday to look more deeply at the public health risks.
At this point, researchers have strong data indicating how much radiation that humans absorb through cell phone use. Thanks to the work of scientists, such as by Niels Kuster, a radiation expert at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and Om Gandhi, a professor and researcher at the University of Utah, there are now reliable models to assess radiation absorption from using cell phones.
A key finding of Kuster's research, which was presented Sunday on the first day of the conference, indicates that children absorb twice as much radiation from cell phones as adults do, mostly because their faces and heads are much smaller. And even though no one knows for certain what the health implications of this absorption is, many countries including Finland and France, have issued warnings to parents urging them not to allow their children to use cell phones.
Now, researchers say they must look at how radiation that is absorbed into the body affects electrons, chemical reactions, and ultimately how it could change human biology.
"From here you build a chain that then points to health effects," said Frank Barnes, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Looking at "most plausible mechanisms"
Scientists know ionizing radiation causes a break in DNA that can lead to cancer. But cell phones operate well below such frequencies. As a result, some scientists have argued that non-ionizing radiation is too low-power to cause cell damage. Others say the effects of non-ionizing radiation on cells and DNA is still not known.
"The question becomes how can you accept the epidemiologic research, if it's not plausible from a biological standpoint?" said Ronald Herberman, director emeritus of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. "Through research, we need to focus on the most plausible mechanisms and see if there is a connection. There might not be direct damage to DNA, but there could be damage to how cells repair themselves, or there could be some other mechanism."
Herberman, a prominent cancer researcher, ignited a firestorm of criticism last year when he issued a controversial warning to his staff urging them to limit cell phone use. He said results from recent studies, growing concern among European governments, and unpublished results from the Interphone study, were enough to prompt him to write the memo.
"Many of my colleagues in cancer research thought I had gone off the reservation," he admitted. But he said he felt that it was better to err on the side of caution in this situation.
Still, Herberman has been critical of some of the research that has been done.
"Most of the studies were not well-designed," he said.
Herberman said researchers need to apply the same type of process to studying the potential biological markers in their studies of cell phone radiation that cancer researchers have used in studying other causes of cancer. He also recommends researchers obtain more reliable data on actual cell phone usage. A key problem in studying the epidemiology of cancer associated with cell phone use is the fact that most of the research concerning humans relies on patients providing information about usage patterns.
"In some of these studies, they have asked people to remember how often they used the phone or in some cases they are asking family members of deceased subjects," he said. "So you are going to get some inaccurate estimates. What is really needed is for the wireless industry to provide detailed usage information."
Herberman said he asked wireless operators to provide this information during his testimony last year at a congressional hearing called by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. But so far the industry has been silent, Herberman said.
Too early for alarm?
While researchers, such as Herberman, say there is enough information to be "concerned," others say it is still too early to sound the alarms.
Michael Thun, vice president emeritus of Epidemiology and Surveillance Research for the American Cancer Society, who is attending this week's conference, said there is nothing to suggest that cell phone use has spurred a significant increase in brain cancer incidences. He said it could be too early to know for sure if there are long-term effects of using a cell phone, because cancer often takes decades to manifest.
For example, he said that it took 30 to 40 years after cigarette mass-production began before epidemiologists saw a big surge in lung cancer. By the 1950s, lung cancer rates had increased nine-fold.
Thun said that the scariest studies about cell phone use, such as the ones from Sweden indicating brain tumors growing on the same side of the head where subjects mostly used their phones, are the hardest to interpret because the timing appears to be inconsistent. These studies suggest that these tumors are appearing within 10 years. And Thun said these types of tumors often grow much slower than that.
"It just doesn't fit what you would expect," he said. "But the wireless industry is advancing very quickly, and it's certainly important to track. There are 3 to 4 billion people using this technology throughout the world, so it's an important question to answer."
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie. 
They may try to garrotte someone with the cable or fashion some kind of weapon.
Cell phones are defiantly not safe.
[CNET editors' note: URL deleted]
Isn't this the purpose of science? There's an observation, and scientists work to determine if the observation is correct, and if so what the underlying cause is. Even if we just prove that cell phones cause no deterctible increase in cancer, isn't that worth proving beyond a doubt?
The data is not conclusive, but calling this nonsense and garbage and the people so-called experts, is a bit off the mark?
Some scientists pursue this. Others chase government (ie our) grant money by declaring every doomsday scenario filled with pseudoscience lingo a "crisis" that needs immediate funding. After all, they don't give you other people's money for saying something does NOT have terrible consequences.
And no, "proving" a non-truth "beyond a doubt" is not worth it, or even possible. The onus is on someone making the outlandish claim to prove his theory. You can't prove a negative, and could spend a hundred years and a trillion trillion dollars trying to disprove all the claims I could rattle off ("Ok you proved the RF signals from 3G are 10,000 times weaker than the radiation it takes to cause mutations, but you haven't proved it for Bluetooth! Or Wi-Fi. Or those nifty induction chargers...that's *radiation* too!")
More importantly, throwing away resources, time, and manpower at every blatantly ridiculous claim just to prove "beyond a doubt" would leave you crippled from pursuing anything actually productive.
Also, why do you call it "garbage"? Do you know something everyone else does not? If we stopped spending money on this it would be akin to sticking our fingers in our ears and humming loudly. Not the smartest thing to do. Let the people who are qualified do the research and find out the truth. I for one would like to know just how much I'm frying my brain when I use a cell phone.
Just because "life is dangerous" doesn't mean you should play Russian roulette.
We can't tell if we should do either without the research.
You can't compare the 60Hz EMR from a fridge to the near microwave radiation from a cell phone.
Fridge = 60 Hz.
Cell phone = RF = 10^7 Hz.
Visual light = 10^15 Hz.
Ionizing radiation = 10^18 and up.
So visible light is 1/1000th the frequency of ionizing radiation. Cell phone signals are 1/100,000,000th of that.
Hard to knock out DNA pairs when the wavelength is the height of a BUILDING.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_frequencies
Cellphones emit at around 10^9 Hz...which is a 30cm wavelength, not quite the height of a building. Sure, not necessarily in the DNA pair destroying range, but you might want to check your facts before posting. That range is the microwave range by all the definitions I'm aware of, and microwaves can do things like alter certain vitamin/protein structures in food, so who knows what they can do to our brain.
Radio as a whole is 1-10m wavelengths. The specific frequencies of cell phones may be closer to 1m than 10m, but we're arguing semantics at this point. You could call waves in the zone where microwave becomes RF either one, but you're orders of magnitude below the actual microwaves you cook stuff with (which are water-molecule-scale wavelengths, not METERS). If you look, what we're talking about is below even radar!
Then look way up above that to where the visible spectrum is. And above that, between UV and X-rays, is where ionizing radiation starts. THEN bear in mind that it's not a linear scale but a log scale.
Whether it's 30 feet or 3 feet, it's still a million times longer than the light you see, which in turn is a thousand times longer than what it takes to hit DNA. This is just pseudo-science hysteria like happened 30 years ago with microwave ovens, or dihydrogen monoxide for that matter...
I say let them do the research so we can know for sure.
You do have to ask like I posted in my comment, would blue tooth headsets affect you the same way?
This is the first time I?ve read about this. I keep learning new things everyday!
My question is, has constant exposure to cellular phone radio waves been reliably demonstrated to give mice cancer? If not, then whatever studies are being run are fairly worthless. There have been years of research, but I'm betting the chances of getting a brain tumor from talking on a cell phone is roughly that of getting cancer from eating Oreos, or drinking from a neoprene bottle, or sitting on a vinyl lawn chair.
Namely, not enough to worry about. Mark this one up as "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt," and move on.
Of course the main problem here has been designing cell phones the mice can hold comfortably against their little ears. Also, many mice resist talking on cell phones on a daily basis. :-)
My opinion is you cannot know unless the research is done first and foremost. Allow the scientists to complete the research and then opinions are no longer required since you have the data available to answer the question definitively.
If you talk to any real scientist, they will tell you this study is silly. We know quite well what kinds of things cause cancer. The energy levels in cell phones don't. The energy levels in modern cell phones even less so. You have infinitely more risk sniffing well water from most parts of the country.
A class of scientists exist who don't have the skill to do real work on their own. They might be able to get a job as a lab assistant. Instead, they find something that will sound scary to the uninformed public, then get research funding for it.
Note: I am sorry if I offended anyone who waves a dead chicken around on the night of a full moon while waring a red suit and a black top hat.
I've been under the impression that everyone at CNET must be getting a stipend of some sort if they mention IPhones and Apple products in their articles, regardless of the relevance to whatever might be being discussed or reviewed.
Be well and take care.
My whole family tree is riddled with cancer and I'm liable to catch it one of these days if I'm not careful.
Hi from one computer geek to another.
Or, he could be talking out his... No, I will not say that.
I am sorry you had cancer. I am also glad you survived it. Your best bet is to follow your doctors advice, eat a healthy diet. and get a healthy amount of exercise.
And if I already HAVE a headache, forget about it. I do not use the cell phone unless I absolutely must if I have a headache. It wouldn't surprise me if there was something affecting us.
<Valid point>
I wonder if the same radiation is present when using a bluetooth headset.
And before you deem this a moot point think about it.
Blue tooth is an entirely different signal type then say EVDO or 3g. Blue tooth headsets don't recieve those signals. They only use blue tooth and further more, only for audio.
</Valid point>
Anyone care to comment on that?
i'm a user of a Novatel mifi (cloud) and i'd like to know as soon as possible if i am putting myself at ANY kind of risk.
at the end of the day, my constantly being connected just is not that serious if i am putting myself in jeopardy.
True, but not relevant. The date of mass *consumption* is what is important epidemiologically. Mass production machinery was invented around the mid-19th century but cigarette smoking on a large scale is mostly a 20th century phenomenon. Per capita consumption in the US in 1900 was only 54 per year, equivalent to about 0.5% of the population smiking more than 100 per year. It grew from there, but that isn't very much to notice a cancer trend in.
Nevertheless, the first strong suggestion of a link was in 1912, and a statistical correlation had been firmly established by 1929. That means more like 10 years to notice the effect, not 40.
Cell phones, in contrast, have been much more widely used in an environment where the abilty to detect such linkage is vastly improved and it is still, at best, controversial. For that reason, and also because it is close to impossible to imagine a causal mechanism, most people regard this as junk science.
- by ronburley September 17, 2009 2:33 PM PDT
- Cell phone transmissions are only a small part of a much larger problem of radio frequency pollution in our environment. Many other transmission sources are adding to the danger, including... TV and Radio stations, microwave relays, WiFi, Portable (non-cell) phones, alarm systems, mobile radio, high power satellite and GPS satellites. The cumulative effect of living in an environment flooded with hundreds of "non-ionizing" radiation has not even been studied. However, the article misstates a simple fact of physics... while ionizing radiation is only more likely to cause changes in DNA than non-ioonizing radiation. It will just take longer. However, the difference in time-to-effect may be greatly overshadowed by the shear number of broadcasting sources around us.
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