Cell phones and brain tumors — industry studies challenged

Common sense says that if you put a microwave gun to your head, and you do it often enough, it will likely do something to you. But the telecom industry continues to maintain in the face of ever-mounting evidence and concern that cell and portable phones are safe. Well maybe they should not be used by children, but otherwise they are safe.

However, the truth is that this technology is not safe, and that industry has been covering up the facts and delaying regulation, dragging its feet to make a buck at the expense of people’s health.

The telecom industry has been carrying out a long-term study for ten years, and wants us to believe that this study shows that cell phone use is safe, and especially that it does not cause brain cancer.

But saying that microwaves do not effect living organisms is like dumping a drum of toxic chemicals into a lake and saying it won’t do any harm, when everyone knows it will.

Now a consortium of health advocacy groups, the International EMF Collaborative, has done its own study to examine the industry’s Interphone study, and it has found numerous ways in which the industry’s study is seriously flawed and biased so that it will not detect any harm from cell phones.

On August 25, 2009 the group released its report, which was sent to government leaders and media. It reveals eleven design flaws in the industry’s 13-country Interphone study, which was begun in 1999 to determine whether cell phone use causes brain tumors. Full publication of the results of the Interphone study have been delayed for years. Those parts that have been released are now said to greatly underestimate brain tumor risk.

The group’s exposé concludes from examining research on cellphones and brain tumors that:

• Cellphone use can cause brain tumors;
• Industry-funded studies underestimate the risk of brain tumors, and;
• Children are at greater risk of having brain tumors than adults.

Among other things, the report just released reveals the following design flaws of industry studies like the Interphone study:

• subjects who used portable phones (which emit the same microwave radiation as cellphones,) were categorized as ‘unexposed’;
• many types of brain tumors were excluded;
• people who had died as a consequence of their brain tumor or were too ill to be interviewed, were excluded; and
• children and young adults, who are more vulnerable, were excluded.

Read the report. Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern, Science, Spin and the Truth Behind Interphone (PDF)

Groups affiliated with the report include Powerwatch and the EM Radiation Research Trust in the UK, and the EMR Policy Institute, ElectromagneticHealth.org and The Peoples Initiative Foundation in the US.

International scientists endorsing the report include Ronald B. Herberman, MD, Director Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute; David Carpenter, MD, Director, Institute for Health and the Environment, University at Albany; Martin Blank, PhD, Associate Professor of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University; Professor Yury Grigoriev, Chairman of Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, and many others.

Information for this story from Powerwatch and EM Radiation Research Trust, audio by ElectromagneticHealth.org.

Shu News related links:

• Cellphones Cause Brain Tumors
• Cell phone health concerns continue to spread
• Radio-frequency pollution: a brewing global health crisis
• Wi-fi in schools continues to evoke protest

Copyright © 2009 ShuswapNews.com