World's Largest Animal Study On Cell Tower Radiation Confirms Cancer Link (digitaljournal.com)

capedgirardeau shares a report from Digital Journal: Researchers with the renowned Ramazzini Institute (RI) in Italy announce that a large-scale, lifetime study (PDF) of lab animals exposed to environmental levels of cell tower radiation developed cancer. The RI study also found increases in malignant brain (glial) tumors in female rats and precancerous conditions including Schwann cells hyperplasia in both male and female rats. A study of much higher levels of cell phone radiofrequency (RF) radiation, from the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), has also reported finding the same unusual cancer called Schwannoma of the heart in male rats treated at the highest dose.

The Ramazzini study exposed 2448 Sprague-Dawley rats from prenatal life until their natural death to "environmental" cell tower radiation for 19 hours per day (1.8 GHz GSM radiofrequency radiation (RFR) of 5, 25 and 50 V/m). RI exposures mimicked base station emissions like those from cell tower antennas, and exposure levels were far less than those used in the NTP studies of cell phone radiation. "All of the exposures used in the Ramazzini study were below the U.S. FCC limits. These are permissible exposures according the FCC. In other words, a person can legally be exposed to this level of radiation. Yet cancers occurred in these animals at these legally permitted levels. The Ramazzini findings are consistent with the NTP study demonstrating these effects are a reproducible finding," explained Ronald Melnick PhD, formerly the Senior NIH toxicologist who led the design of the NTP study on cell phone radiation now a Senior Science Advisor to Environmental Health Trust (EHT). "Governments need to strengthen regulations to protect the public from these harmful non-thermal exposures."

Comments

Re: If cell phones cause cancer

[c6gunner]

This is a large scale lifetime Italian study, finding statistically significant increase of a specific and uncommon cancer

Not really. This appears to be a large scale farce which subdivides a large population into 24 subgroups and then tries to pretend that the result is still statistically significant, despite it being pretty much what you would expect from chance alone.

Re:If cell phones cause cancer

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like it could be a natural instance of p hacking.

We just run the same study over and over and over, everyone hoping to find the link, but only the people who find what they want publish."Cell phone still don't cause cancer" isn't sexy.

Re: If cell phones cause cancer

[Ol Olsoc]

How about Albert Einstein?

The wavelength of ionizising radiation (the type that can cause cancer) is well known. Cellphone towers don't emit it.

While not ionizing radiation, RF radiation can and does have physical effects - Usually heating.

So I'm not going to write off the entire idea of carcinogenic effects, but I think it is very unlikely. And unless there is some homeopathic thing going on, holding a cell phone right up to your head exposing it to the the near field is going to dose you a hella lot more than being in the far field of a cell tower.

Humans have been carrying that experiment on for years now, I know people who spend hours every day soaking up near-field radiation from their smartphones. We should see some human results.