Chronic exposure to 3G (UMTS) cell phone radiation can promote the growth of tumors, according to a new animal study presented at a workshop in Berlin last week. This finding is "remarkable," according to the lead researcher, Thomas Tillmann of the Fraunhofer Institute of Toxicology and Experimental Medicine (ITEM) in Hannover, Germany. At this point, only the conference abstract is available (p.10).
This results stands in contrast to those of the PERFORM-A animal studies. (Tillmann was involved in one of the PERFORM-A studies too.) Unlike the animals in the PERFORM A experiments which were restrained and under stress (see our report, "Wheel on Trial"), the mice in this new study were allowed to run free. The other crucial difference, other than the nature of the exposure signal, is that the mice in Tillmann's experiment were exposed for much longer than those in PERFORM-A: 20 hours a day, seven days a week.
In PERFORM-A, the animals were exposed as little as one hour per day, and never more than four hours per day. Last year, in a separate study, Germany's Alex Lerchl reported no effects among lymphoma-prone mice chronically exposed to UMTS.
Note: The results of this study appear in the July 2010 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Biology.