A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

U.K.: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )

June 11, 2019

GBM is going up in Denmark. The steady rise is very similar to what has been seen in England.

New government data, released in May by a member of the Danish Parliament, show a near doubling of this fatal brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme, since the year 2000. You can see the trend by following the orange line in the histogram …

March 20, 2019

“Glioblastomas Have Doubled in Number in England Since Mobile Phones Were Introduced in 1995,” Pandora Foundation for Independent Research, March 19, 2019.

It's been a year since the Philips paper was published. This is the first discussion of its implications. See our report published last March.

October 26, 2018

A U.K. epidemiologist has confirmed that glioblastoma (GBM), the most aggressive type of brain tumor, is on the rise in England. In a new paper, Frank de Vocht of the University of Bristol reports that he sees a significant and consistent increase in GBM in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain over the last 20-30 years.

Alasdair Philips, an independent researcher based in Scotland, and three colleagues first documented the increase last March. It was not due to improved diagnosis, they said, but they could not pinpoint which “environmental or lifestyle factor” was responsible. There was one obvious possibility: cell phones.

October 18, 2018

“Analyses of Temporal and Spatial Patterns of GBM and other Brain Cancers Subtypes in Relation to Mobile Phones Using Synthetic Counterfactuals,” Environmental Research, posted October 17, 2018.

Frank de Vocht confirms that GBM is rising in the U.K. but argues that it’s “unlikely” that RF from cell phones is responsible.

March 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.

January 31, 2017

The incidence of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most virulent and deadly type of brain cancer, is going up in the U.K., while the incidence there of other types of malignant brain tumors are declining, according to some newly published raw data.

Take a look at the two plots below and the trends are immediately apparent.

The incidence rates are not corrected for age, or any...

April 9, 2014

“Occupational Exposure of Healthcare and Research Staff to Static Magnetic Stray Fields from 1.5–7 Tesla MRI Scanners Is Associated with Reporting of Transient Symptoms,” Occupational & Environmental Medicine, posted online April 8, 2014.

“[D]uring 6% of the MRI shifts in this study workers experienced vertigo, which constitutes a potential safety hazard for both worker and patient. Additionally, several workers reported that symptoms affected their ability to work.” A Dutch-U.K. collaboration. Open Access.

October 6, 2013

The research group at the University of Oxford that reported a link between long-term use of a mobile phone and an elevated risk of acoustic neuroma (AN) in May now says that it is no longer there. In a short letter to the International Journal of Epidemiology (IJE), the Oxford team advises that when the analysis was repeated with data from 2009-2011, "there is no longer a significant...

May 10, 2013

A new study from the U.K. is adding support to the still controversial proposition that long-term use of a cell phone increases the risk of developing acoustic neuroma, a tumor of the auditory nerve. No higher risk of glioma or meningioma, two types of brain cancer, was observed.

Women who used a mobile phone for more than ten years were two-and-half-times more likely to have an acoustic neuroma than those who never used a phone. The finding is statistically significant. This is the fourth epidemiological study that shows an association between long-term use of a cell phone and acoustic neuroma.

March 29, 2013
June 16, 2011

Who wouldn't be confused? Here's a headline from today's U.K. Daily Mail: "Mobile Phones May NOT Increase Cancer Risk as Most Brain Tumours 'Not Within Radiation Range'." Yet, just two days earlier, it gave its readers a very different message: "Number of People with Brain Cancer Could Soar 20-Fold in 20 Years Because of Mobile Phones, Experts Warn." These opposing stories stem from the two...

March 3, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, the University of Manchester in England issued a press release on a new paper on brain cancer trends in the U.K., under the headline, "Mobile Phone Use Not Related to Increased Brain Cancer Risk." Clear and catchy — but wrong. Frank de Vocht and two collaborators actually saw a...

September 18, 2008

"Where is Interphone?" asked Ian Gibson, a member of the U.K. Parliament, at last week's Radiation Research Trust (RRT) conference in London. "Whose desk is it on?" No one offered an answer, not even Anders Ahlbom, a member of the Swedish Interphone group, who earlier that morning had given a talk on EMF epidemiology.

October 30, 2007

Another reader has brought to our attention a fourth paper showing that GSM radiation can alter sleep. James Horne and coworkers at the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University in the U.K. have reported that very weak (0.133 W/Kg) signals can delay sleep onset. The new work, published in June, raises some particularly important —and thorny— issues regarding the biological effects of different ELF modulations on the 900 MHz GSM pulses. We'll leave those for another time, but for now the Loughborough study reinforces the take-home message that RF effects on sleep have become a major focus of the mobile phone health controversy.

May 1, 2007

U.K. newspapers ran another batch of power line and WiFi stories last weekend. The BBC, the Guardian and the Times all featured items on EMFs following the formal release of the SAGE report, which presented policy options to address EMF health risks. The Daily Mail profiled Sarah Dacre and her travails with electrosensitivity. And the Independent and the Telegraph continued to focus on public anxiety over the proliferation of Wi-Fi systems, especially in schools.

January 22, 2007

An international team of researchers has found new evidence that long-term use of a mobile phone may lead to the development of a brain tumor on the side of the head the phone is used. In a study which will appear in an upcoming issue of the International Journal of Cancer, epidemiologists from five European countries report a nearly 40% increase in gliomas, a type of brain tumor, among those who had used a cell phone for ten or more years. The increase is statistically significant. In addition, there was a trend showing that the brain tumor risk increased with years of use. The new paper is posted on the journal's Web site.

November 20, 2006

According to today's London Times, Sir William Stewart believes that the evidence that microwave radiation can have potentially harmful effects has become more persuasive over the past five years. Stewart, who was the the chief science advisor to the U.K government from 1990 to 1995, is the head of the U.K.'s Health Protection Agency —which absorbed the NRPB last year. He chaired the panel which wrote the influential report Mobile Phones and Health in 2000.

June 16, 2006

Powerwatch, the U.K. EMF group, has taken us to task for not being "outspoken enough" in our comments on the HPA's new paper on microcells (see our June 14 post). Alasdair Philips is outraged over the NRPB's (now the HPA) failure to survey the more powerful base station antennas that are less than 10 meters off the ground. "The operators have installed high-power macrocell type transmitters at microcell sites," he wrote. He offered a one-word assessment of the JRP paper —"rubbish." Last year, Powerwatch posted a detailed critique of the 2004 NRPB report.

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