Cell Phone Range Outside Most Brain Tumor Locations

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Academic Journal
Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Also Included In: Cancer / Oncology;  Neurology / Neuroscience
Article Date: 16 Jun 2011 - 0:00 PDT

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Cell phone radiation cannot reach the cells where most brain tumors are located - so, is their alleged link to brain cancer in some studies misplaced? Study author, Dr. Suvi Larjavaara from the University of Tampere, Finland, explained in the American Journal of Epidemiology that regular mobile phone users do not have a higher incidence of brain tumors within the radiation range of their telephones (5 centimeters), compared to people who rarely or never use cellphones.

These findings clash with a WHO (World Health Organization) announcement that cell phones should be classified as possibly carcinogenic.

It is not possible yet to make any definitive conclusions, Larjavaara explained. Cancer is a very slow progressive disease can take several years to manifest itself. Only 1 in every 20 people in this study had been regularly using mobile phones for at least a decade.

The authors explained that the energy absorbed from cellphone radio-frequency fields depends almost entirely on how far it is from the source. Dr. Larjavaara and team wanted to determine whether gliomas are more likely to develop in parts of the brain which receive the highest levels of radio-frequency exposure.

A glioma is a brain tumor that starts in a glial. A glial is a supportive cell in the central nervous system (spinal cord or brain).

The scientists used two methods of approach:

• A case-case analysis - the locations of tumors were compared with different levels of exposure
• A case-specular analysis - an imaginary reference location was allocated for each glioma. The distance from the real and specular locations to the cellphone were compared.

888 gliomas from 7 different countries in Europe were studied. Their results did not suggest that gliomas in cellphone users tend to occur in areas of the brain with the highest radio-frequency exposures.

A 2010 study involving 13,000 regular mobile phone users who had been using their handsets for over ten years found no clear association between cellphone devices and brain tumors. A 2011 study reported in February detected alterations in brain cell activity.

As you can see below, all these reports have done is to confuse members of the public. As one reader commented "If not even the experts can agree, who knows?"

• "Cellphones Cause Brain Tumors, Says New Report By International EMF Collaborative"
• "No Increased Brain Cancer Risk From Cell-Phone Use"
• "Cellphones Possibly Linked To Cancer Risk In Humans, World Health Organization"
  
• "Mobile Phones Do No Harm, UK Report"
• "Extensive Cell Phone Use Linked To Brain Tumors, Swedish Study"
• "No Rise In Brain Tumors After Decade Of Sharply Rising Cell Phone Usage, New Study"

Citation:
"Location of Gliomas in Relation to Mobile Telephone Use: A Case-Case and Case-Specular Analysis"
Suvi Larjavaara, Joachim Schüz, Anthony Swerdlow, Maria Feychting, Christofer Johansen, Susanna Lagorio, Tore Tynes, Lars Klaeboe, Sven Reidar Tonjer, Maria Blettner, Gabriele Berg-Beckhoff, Brigitte Schlehofer, Minouk Schoemaker, Juliet Britton, Riitta Mäntylä, Stefan Lönn, Anders Ahlbom, Olof Flodmark, Anders Lilja, Stefano Martini, Emanuela Rastelli, Antonello Vidiri, Veikko Kähärä, Jani Raitanen, Sirpa Heinävaara and Anssi Auvinen.
Am. J. Epidemiol. (2011) doi: 10.1093/aje/kwr071

Written by Christian Nordqvist
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

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