Interphone: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )

If Martha Linet had represented NCI at the IARC RF meeting instead of Peter Inskip, she probably would not have walked out before the final vote. Linet would have likely been part of the near unanimous bloc designating cell phone radiation as a possible cause of cancer —...

A short summary of the IARC Working Group's decision to classify radiofrequency (RF) radiation as a "possible human carcinogen" (2B) was posted this morning on the Web pages of Lancet Oncology.

IARC has not paid for the two-page summary to be open access. [IARC later changed its mind and it is now a free download.]

It's not easy to reach unanimous agreement on anything to do with cell phone radiation. And when it comes to cell phones and cancer, forget about it. But the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) nearly pulled it off. On Tuesday, May 31, more than two dozen scientists and doctors from 14 countries —a group IARC Director Christopher Wild called “the world’s leading experts”— issued a joint statement that cell phone and other types of radiofrequency (RF) and microwave radiation might cause cancer.

Alasdair Philips, a founder of Powerwatch, the U.K. activist group, is calling for "urgent action" to protect children from an epidemic of brain and other tumors in 10-30 years. He says that it's now "morally irresponsible" to allow youngsters to use mobile phones. Philips's call to arms follows word that two...

It's only a short letter buried in the back pages of a journal, but it could change the entire cell phone–cancer controversy.

A group at Hebrew University in Jerusalem has reported a sharp increase in the incidence of parotid gland tumors in Israel over the last 30 years. Rakefet Czerninski, Avi Zini and Harold Sgan-Cohen found that these tumors have quadrupled since 1970, "with the steepest increase" after 2001 (see plot below). Their letter appears in the January 2011 issue of Epidemiology; it's a free download. They are with the Hadassah School of Dental Medicine at the university.

The acoustic neuroma story is becoming quite compelling.

Researchers in Tokyo have reported that they too found more of these tumors of the acoustic nerve among long-term cell phone users —the third group to see this link. Those who used cell phones for more than 20 minutes a day for at least five years had three times more acoustic neuromas than expected. The Japanese team also saw a strong suggestion of a dose-response relationship: The longer people used cell phones —both in terms of minutes of daily calls and years of use— the greater their risk.

The Paper — E. Cardis et al. (The Interphone Study Group), "Brain Tumour Risk in Relation to Mobile Telephone Use: Results of the Interphone International Case-Control Study," International Journal of Epidemiology, 2010 (open access)
Supplementary Data — Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 (open access)
Commentary— R. Sarraci & J. Samet, "Call Me on My Mobile Phone … Or Better Not? — A Look at the Interphone Study Results," International Journal of Epidemiology, 2010 (open access)
Press Releases:
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) — "Interphone Study Reports on Mobile Phone Use and Brain Cancer Risk"  May 17
International Union Against Cancer (UICC) — "Interphone Study Reports on Mobile Phone Use and Brain Cancer Risk" undated
Audio of Press Conference, held at WHO Headquarters, Geneva,  May 17

An essential part of the Interphone story is Appendix 2. Although not included in the paper, it offers a way to look at the risks free of some of the bias that so muddled the published results. It also provides a window on the controversy that deadlocked the Interphone group for four years.

There is a general consensus that the large number of abnormally low risks observed in Interphone is a sign of a systematic problem —selection bias— in the way that the study was carried out. As the Interphone group acknowledges, it is “unlikely” that cell phones could immediately provide protection against brain tumors (see main Interphone Story).

Pity those who are trying to follow the cell phone–brain tumor story. Their sense of the cancer risk is most likely a reflection of the last thing they read or saw on TV —It all depends on whose sound bite they happen to catch.

Take, for example, a paper published earlier this month in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) by a team of Scandinavian epidemiologists, under a rather bland title — “Time Trends in Brain Tumor Incidence Rates in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, 1974–2003.” But its message is anything but: Because there has been no increase in brain tumors between 1998 and 2003, a period when the use of cell phones “increased sharply,” cell phones are cancer safe.