A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News & Comment

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has recruited Joachim Schüz to lead its Section on Environment. Among his duties in Lyon, Schüz will supervise the still-unfinished work of theInterphone project. He will also play an advisory role in next year's IARC review of the possible cancer risks associated with RF radiation. Schüz, who begins at the agency on August 2, will report to Christopher Wild, the director of IARC.

Monday, May 17, 2010

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).

Monday, May 17, 2010

There's an old saying that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Welcome to Interphone.

The good news is that the Interphone paper has finally been made public after a four-year stalemate within the 13-country research team. But it comes at a price. A series of compromises over how to interpret the results of the largest and most expensive study of cell phones and brain tumors ever attempted has left the paper with no clear conclusions other than more research is needed.

Monday, May 17, 2010

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

Friday, May 7, 2010

The first results of the Interphone project will be released on May 18, Microwave News has learned. The paper will be published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. "It is scheduled to be in the June issue," said an assistant in the journal's editorial office in Bristol, England. An electronic copy of the paper will be posted on the "advance access" page of the journal's Web site on the 18th.

Pages

Short Takes

IARC Publishes Rationale for RF as
Possible Human Carcinogen

April 19, 2013

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has released its detailed evaluation of the cancer risks associated with RF radiation, which serves as the rationale for designating RF as a possible human carcinogen.

The IARC monograph comes close to two years after an invited panel of experts from 14 countries reached this conclusion following an eight-day meeting at IARC headquarters in Lyon, France (see our...

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FCC Begins Review of Its RF Safety Rules 

March 29, 2013

Today, the FCC —finally— issued a package of rules and requests for information related to RF health and safety. We say finally because the commission announced that this was on its way last June (see "What's Up at the FCC?"). No one at the FCC is eager to say why it took so long, except that it covers a lot of ground.

The document is indeed long (over 200 pages) and...

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Plus Ça Change…

December 4, 2012

Another in our continuing series  —Nothing Ever Really Changes. 

We recently came across an item in the January 20, 1964 issue of Newsweek titled, "The Mrs. G Effect" about a California housewife, who could hear noises that no one else could hear.

An "expert" was brought in. As far as he could tell, Mrs. G was converting alternating current fields into sound signals "as though she were a radio receiver." Newsweek also talked to Allan Frey who offered qualified support. "If you use the correct frequency and modulate it properly, it's easy to induce...

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Buddy, Can You Spare $25,000?

November 30, 2012

EPRI, the research arm of the electric utility industry, has just published what might be a very useful report. Unfortunately, most of us will never get to see it.

The report is an evaluation of consumer-grade RF exposure meters —the type of instrument you might use to measure radiation levels from a cell tower or a smart meter. In a short abstract, which is publicly available, EPRI states, "Consumers need to recognize that each [RF...

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All Short Takes...