Cell Phone Use And Tumors: Congress Hears What Science Has To Say

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Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Also Included In: Pediatrics / Children's Health;  Public Health;  Neurology / Neuroscience
Article Date: 26 Sep 2008 - 9:00 PST

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A US House of Congress Subcommittee on Domestic Policy heard what science has to say about cell phone use and brain tumors on Thursday. Witnesses included representatives from the Federal Communications Commission, two cancer institutes, university research centres, and Mrs Ellie Marks of Lafayette, California, whose husband discovered he had a tumor on the right side of his brain in May this year.

The hearing was chaired by Rep. Denis Kucinich of Ohio, and much of the discussion revolved around whether there are significant links between cell phone use and brain cancer.

Dr Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, said he could not tell the subcommittee members that cell phones were dangerous, but neither could he assure them they were safe.

Dr. David Carpenter, director of Institute for Health and the Environment at University of Albany, said some studies have shown links between long term cell phone use and brain cancer.

Both men talked about a recent Swedish study by Dr Lennart Hardell of Orebro University that is supposed to have found that long term cell phone use doubles the risk of malignant brain tumors and acoustic neromas (where the tissue of the hearing nerve develops tumors). Lennart and colleagues said young people were even more likely to develop brain cancer from cell phone use, up to five times higher risk for people under 20.

However, Lennart's study has not yet appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, and until it does, it will not be treated as proper science. This was the sentiment expressed by another witness, Dr Robert Hoover, director or Epidemiology and Biostatistics Program at the National Cancer Institute, who said there was not enough research from which to draw firm conclusions one way or another and more should be done.

"Larger studies are needed to sort out chance and bias", said Hoover, according to a report by CNN.

While some studies have suggested there is a higher risk of brain tumor occurring on the side of the head the cell phone is most often pressed to, others have not found this, said Hoover. Also, a series of studies called Interphone which were done in different countries did not find an increased risk of tumors from the first ten years of cell phone use, he added.

A representative from the International Association for Wireless Telecommunications declined to attend the hearing, but the CEO of the Association issued a statement the day before that said leading experts from well known global health organizations predominantly agree there is no reason for concern based on the evidence available.

Carpenter tended to support this statement, saying that based on a well known statistical standard, the 95 per cent confidence level (that is the result of the study is likely to be the same 95 times out of every 100 repetitions) research that says there is a link between cell phone use and brain cancer does not stand up.

But Carpenter also said there is very little US-funded research in this area and suggested "Are we at the same place we were with smoking and lung cancer 30 years ago?"

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, is an important rule to remember in scientific investigation.

If there is a risk, then it is greater for children than for adults, both Carpenter and Herberman agreed with this, and explained that the electromagnetic radiation from cell phones is able to penetrate much further into the brain of a child compared to that of an adult.

However, one might expect to see some changes in the incidence of brain cancer in children if there was a higher risk, and there has been no significant increase from 1980 to 2005 said Hoover.

Mrs Ellie Marks told the hearing that her husband used his cell phone against his ear for about 30 hours a month. He developed a tumor on the same of his head. She said she believed the tumor was caused by the cell phone, and wishes she had thrown it "in the garbage" as she had threatened to do so.

In July this year, Herberman sent a memo to all the staff at his faculty urging them to limit their use of cell phones, and to limit their children's use especially. He said at the time that it was important to err on the safe side, rather than wait for a definitive study linking cell phone use with cancer. He said that other countries like France and Germany had already issued recommendations to limit exposure to electromagnetic fields.

Source: CNN, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD


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