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Why Peer Review Panel and NTP Interpreted the Same Animal Data Differently

April 9, 2018
Last updated February 15, 2023

“You had it right the first time.” That was the implicit message to the National Toxicology Program (NTP) from an expert panel after a point-by-point review of NTP’s draft reports on its $25 million study of cancer risks of cell phone radiation in mice and rats.

Two years ago, with the results in hand, the NTP rushed to warn the public about the dangers of cell phones. It issued an interim report pointing to higher rates of tumors in the hearts and brains of male rats exposed to two different kinds of phone radiation. Then early this February with the release of the formal draft reports, the NTP made a U-turn, saying that using a cell phone “is not a high-risk situation.”

Now a peer review panel —11 pathologists and toxicologists from academia and industry and one statistician— has concluded that there is “clear evidence of carcinogenic activity” in those male rats.

Rate of GBM More Than Doubled Between 1995 and 2015

March 25, 2018
Last updated June 25, 2018

The incidence of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the deadliest type of brain tumor, more than doubled in England between 1995 and 2015, according to a new analysis of national statistics. During that time, the number of cases of GBM rose from 983 to 2,531.

“We found a sustained and highly significant increase in GBM throughout the 21 years and across all ages,” said Alasdair Philips, the lead author of the study, which has just been released online by the peer-reviewed, open access, Journal of Environmental and Public Health.

“The incidence rate of GBM, the most aggressive and quickly fatal brain tumor, is rising dramatically in England while the rates for lower grade tumors have decreased, masking this dramatic trend in the overall data,” Philips told Microwave News from his home in Beeswing in southern Scotland, not far from the English border.

Ramazzini’s Belpoggi Calls for IARC To Reassess RF–Cancer Risk

March 22, 2018

Partial results of the Ramazzini Institute’s RF–animal study, which show a statistically significant increase in tumors in the hearts of male rats exposed to GSM radiation, were officially released today. They appear in Environmental Research, a peer-reviewed journal.

As we reported last month, the Ramazzini finding of Schwann cell tumors —called schwannomas— in the rat hearts is consistent with a similar finding by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) in a $25 million RF project.

In an interview with Microwave News, Fiorella Belpoggi, the senior author of the new paper and the director of the Ramazzini Institute’s Research Center in Bologna, Italy, offered her views on the new results, the parallels with those of the NTP and the implications for IARC’s designation of the cancer risk of RF radiation.

New Large Animal Study, Like NTP’s, Links RF to Schwannoma of the Heart

February 20, 2018
Last updated March 6, 2018

It’s happened again.

A second large study has found tumors in the Schwann cells —schwannomas— in the hearts of male rats exposed to cell phone radiation.

The new finding comes from the Ramazzini Institute in Bologna, Italy.

The malignant schwannomas of the heart seen in the Italian study are the same as those described by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) earlier this month as the basis for their concern that cell phone radiation, both GSM and CDMA, can lead to cancer.

Same RF Cancer Data, Different Outlook

February 7, 2018

Why was the NTP so ambivalent about its cell phone cancer findings at the press conference last Friday when two years ago the same scientific evidence prompted a public health warning?

Some of the pathology numbers got tweaked since they were first released in 2016, but the changes were minor. It’s the same data set —but with a very different interpretation. The NTP mindset somehow shifted from we need to release this important new health data now to this is “not a high-risk situation.”

Who or what moved the NTP managers to change their outlook? There’s no shortage of suspects and suspicions.

At Least 7 Studies Now Show an Association
Kaiser’s De-Kun Li Answers His Critics

December 18, 2017

Magnetic fields at levels commonly found in homes, offices and the urban environment have once again been found to increase the risk of pregnancy loss. The latest study —from Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, CA— shows that power-frequency fields can triple the risk of miscarriages.

“This study provides fresh evidence, directly from a human population, that magnetic field exposure in daily life could have adverse health impacts,” De-Kun Li, the lead author of the Kaiser study, told Microwave News. These findings “should bring attention to this potentially important environmental hazard to pregnant women,” Li urges.

There are now at least seven studies linking miscarriages to prenatal exposure to electromagnetic fields, according to Li.

Karolinska’s Maria Feychting Cites Pathology Bias To Discredit NTP RF Cancer Study

December 1, 2017
Last updated December 2, 2017

”A few days ago, I received an urgent warning from a longtime contact in Sweden. An industry associate had told him that the U.S. National Toxicology Program’s study on cell phone cancer risks was screwed up and essentially “useless.”

I was tempted to disregard it as nothing more than a corporate delusion. But the original source was said to be Maria Feychting, a professor at the Karolinska Institute and the vice chair of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). She had cast doubt on the landmark $25 million NTP RF–animal study in a talk presented at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences —the institute that awards the Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry every year.

I decided I had to check out the rumor.

A Reminiscence on the Occasion of Abe Liboff’s 90th Birthday

August 27, 2017
Last updated January 12, 2023

Today is Abe Liboff’s 90th birthday. Liboff is a physicist —he was the chairman of the physics department at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, for many years, and, before that, a professor at NYU. He used to be a coeditor of the journal, Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine.

As long as I have known him, Liboff has been asking questions about the world he sees all around. When possible, he runs experiments to test out his ideas. He continues to have a lively correspondence with those who share his interests in electromagnetic field effects, especially the role of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Back in 1984 when I first got to know him, Liboff had recently completed a two-year fellowship at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. He was back at Oakland but continued to collaborate with a psychologist at NMRI, John Thomas, who was doing research for the New York Power Line Project.

Liboff’s work at NMRI led to two startling experimental findings.

N.P. Singh, the Comet Assay and
“Radiation Research”

April 27, 2017
Last updated May 9, 2019

Narendra P. Singh, known to friends and colleagues simply as NP, died last December at the age of 69. When his family wrote to me with the news, Singh’s wife asked me not to publish a tribute or an obituary at that time. I honored her request, but now, after a decent interval, I break my silence, in part to make good on a promise and to settle some unfinished business.

Singh was a proud and honest man; he was also gentle and unassuming. “He cannot tell a lie, even a white lie,” Henry Lai, his long-time collaborator at the University of Washington in Seattle, told me years ago. Perhaps most of all, Singh was a meticulous experimentalist who believed in the power of science.

Peer Reviewers Had Sought More Information;
Cell Phone-Cancer Report Due in December

March 21, 2017

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) has changed course and will not —at least for the time being— publish its findings of increased DNA breaks among rats exposed to cell phone radiation as a stand-alone paper.

The DNA study, which is part of NTP’s landmark experiment showing that RF radiation can lead to tumors in the brains and hearts of laboratory animals, will now be incorporated in NTP’s Technical Report on the $25 million project, the NTP has told Microwave News.

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