Swedish Study Finds Cell Phone Cancer Risk

dtjohnson writes "A new Swedish study has found that heavy users of cell phones had a 240 percent increase in brain tumors on the side of their head that the phone was used on. The study defined 'heavy' use as more than 2,000 total hours, or approximately one hour of use per workday for 10 years. An earlier British study was previously discussed here that didn't find an increased risk, although that study covered fewer subjects and only followed one type of brain tumor for a shorter period of time. Or course, the biggest epidemiological study of all is the one we are all participating in whenever we use our cell phone. The results from that study won't be available for a while."

Comments

mibile phone health risks

[Techojoe]

While it has been suspected for some time that cell phones may cause tumors there has been considerable debate over the subject. Telcos and phone makers taking the anti health risk stance for obvious reasons.The phone companies have put large sums of money into reaserch to tell them and us that the phones themselves are harmless. It looks now as if an independant? researcher has added to the body of evidence that there is in fact a real risk. To temper that however it appears you have to be a pretty heavy user to be at risk. Interestingly the mobil phone towers them selves seem to escape the scruting that the handsets have been subjected to.

Re:Assumptions

[MichaelSmith]

Well, what is identified as the main reason behind tumours is the radiation that comes from the antenna of the cell phone.

TFA doesn't say that except with reference to a British study.

Using a hands-free set makes sure that the antenna is far away from your head.

Some phones put so much RF into the hands free kit that radiation exposure is worse on hands free. It would be even worse if you leave the earpiece in between calls.

Re:suprised?

[rbarreira]

And how would you explain that the tumors were more likely to be located on the side of the head closest to where the user would put the phone?

Re:Um.

[dhoonlee]

this clearly identifies a weakness in the tagging system

Re:suprised?

[Anne Thwacks]

people who work at TV and FM stations should be dropping like flies.

Except that they don't go nea the antenna (or they would be cooked), and thee is such a thing as the invese squae law.

Howeve, if the study coves 20 yeas, then it coves the time when cellphones put out a steady 4 watts. Now they can pehaps peak at that, but now they use adaptive power levels, the average power level while transmitting is generally below 100mW, and often below 4mW.However, the power from a domestic light bulb in that band is? and the SUn's radiation is massively greeater

In simple terms,

a)if it covers 20 years, its not relevant to today's phones.

b)FM radio is not relevant at all

c)If today's phones are a risk, then they are less of a risk than having incandescent light bulbs in your home, or being exposed to sunlight and that does not appear to kill anyone.

Re:Assumptions

[erkulikondrio]

"The way to get the risk down is to use hands-free," he told Reuters.

And if I use SMS ?

Re:It is new times

[vtcodger]

You could be right, but I suspect not. If -- and I emphasize if -- there is a problem, it seems more likely to be caused by the relatively high powered radiation from the cell phone antenna, not the probably relatively low powered leakage from the cell phone circuits. As far as I know, newer phones don't put much, if any, less power into their antennas than older phones. If they did, their range would probably be shorter which cell phone companies and cell phone users would regard as undesirable. It's true that the wiring in the cell phone could be emiting radiation at different frequencies than the RF link to the cell phone tower. But few people really think that we know of any danger from any radiation that is likely to be coming out of a cell phone -- whether intentional or accidental -- that is likely to be dangerous to users. That's why this study is possibly important. If cell phones can cause any physiological change -- whether rare tumors or increased sexual potency -- it is important to understand how. Who knows, if cell phone radiation can really affect physiology, cell phone users might be cooking the neurons in their brains. That might be a problem as it seems to me that an awful lot of cell phone users don't have all that much cranial capacity to spare.

No, dangerous confusion of research methods

[Geste]

"This article is poor (I would say unethical) coverage of a scientific study. [snip...] Also, with this studay, they found out people who had tumors, then asked them if they used cell phones. The subjects probably had no doubt as to why this question was being asked, therefore this was not really a double blind experiment."

I will not argue that the CNet article represents this study very well, but if you are going to complain so casually about coverage of this study -- even calling it unethical -- it would help if some of your supporting arguments and complaints weren't so lousy.

You seem to have no notion of the differences between a retrospective case-contol study (which is what the researchers conducted) and a prospective clinical trial (where you could reasonably employ double-blind methods).

If you look past CNet and find the original article in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health you will see that the study included over 2000 control subjects.

It is possible to design lousy studies of any type. There are also reasons to be cautious in interepreting the results of retrospective studies, but particularly in the case of low-incidence disease, they are often the only way to start looking at risk factors -- give policy makers at least something to start working with. So, until you come up with 3 billion dollars and an ethical design for a perfect double-blind cell phone study, I would encourage you to be a bit more forgiving.

I will now retire to consider what a placebo cell phone would look like.

Re:Read the Study

[budgenator]

wrong answer, 85 out of 905 CA patients were high users; that's 9.4 %, much less than the amount what you're ridiculing the study for being alarmist over.

One thing I'd be curious about is because the study reported that people who use cell phone have a 240% greater chance of their tumor being located on the side of the brain that they hold their cells on, what percentage of right-handed people have malignant tumors on the left-side of their brains (left brian controls right body) and left-handers with maligincies in the right side of the brain.