If you’re like two-thirds of Canadians – a smartphone user – you probably read the latest bad news about cellphone use on your cellphone: a major study by the US National Toxicology Program (NTP) linking the effects of Radiofrequency (RF) radiation from phones to cancer.
The two-year, $25 million study on more than 2,500 lab rats found “low incidences” of two types of cancer (gliomas and schwannomas) in male rats exposed to nine hours of RF radiation a day over the course of their lives.
As the study notes, “Given the widespread global usage of mobile communications among users of all ages, even a very small increase in the incidence of disease resulting from exposure to [Radiofrequency radiation] could have broad implications for public health.”
The Wall Street Journal described the findings as “explosive.” Mother Jones called them “game changing.” And then the backlash began, accusing early news reports of fear-mongering, with “irresponsible” journalism fanning cancer fears.
Should we be worried or move on?
The NTP study has been picked apart by several scientists for being “underpowered” (too small), on rats (how applicable is the data to humans?), and released before it’s fully peer-reviewed (the rest of the findings won’t come out until 2017).
Indeed, there were some weird findings – like that male rats exposed to radiation lived longer than rats that weren’t exposed. Female rats didn’t see an increase in tumour risk at all. Several critics point out that a recently published 30-year study out of Australia has concluded that there’s been “no increase in brain cancer incidence compatible with the steep increase in mobile phone use.”
Michael Lauer, the deputy director of the US National Institutes of Health’s office, has said he’s “skeptical of the [NTP’s] claims” and “unable to accept the conclusions,” suspicious that “the few positive results found were false positive findings.”
In the other corner, the American Cancer Society’s chief medical officer, Otis Brawley, says in a statement that, “For years, the understanding of the potential risk of radiation from cellphones has been hampered by a lack of good science. This report… is good science.”
Brawley goes on to call the NTP findings a “paradigm shift in our understanding of radiation and cancer risk,” since we wouldn’t reasonably expect nonionizing radiation, like the kind given off by cellphones, to cause the tumours found in the study. Ionizing radiation, on the other hand, including X-rays and gamma rays, are widely accepted as a carcinogen.
“It’s interesting to note that early studies on the link between lung cancer and smoking had similar resistance,” says Brawley, “since theoretical arguments at the time suggested that there could not be a link.”
Brawley argues that the lack of tumours in female rats shouldn’t detract from the study’s importance, since this sort of gender difference isn’t uncommon in carcinogenic studies. (Speculation is that estrogen may help protect against certain cancers). He also points out that the NTP used double the number of rats usually required for these types of studies and convened not one but three panels to assess abnormal tissues.
Still, he says the study is not a smoking gun. “While this study adds significantly to the evidence that cellphone signals could potentially impact human health…, additional research will be needed to translate effects at these high doses to what might be expected at the much lower doses received by typical or even high-end cell phone users.”
It’s hard to say what regulators will do with the data. Back in 2011, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer punched up controversy when it announced it had classified Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans. That was based on a possible increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer associated with wireless phone use.
That year, Health Canada issued a public guide, “It’s your health,” on cellphone safety prefacing safety tips with the proviso that “at present, the evidence of a possible link between RF energy exposure and cancer risk is far from conclusive and more research is needed to clarify this possible link.”
It then went on to remind cell users that they can reduce their RF exposure by limiting the length of their calls, using hands-free devices, texting and encouraging parents to take measures to reduce their kids exposure from phones “since children are typically more sensitive to a variety of environmental agents.”
For more on cellphone radiation and whether cellphone shields work, check out this past Ecoholic column.
ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | @ecoholicnation
