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H e a l t h a n d S a f e t y
How much evidence is there that hand-held mobile phones might be
harmful?
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Accompli 009 User's Guide
Briefly, there is not enough evidence to know for sure, either way;
however, research efforts are on-going. The existing scientific
evidence is conflicting and many of the studies that have been done
to date have suffered from flaws in their research methods. Animal
experiments investigating the effects of RF exposures characteristic
of mobile phones have yielded conflicting results. A few animal
studies, however, have suggested that low levels of RF could
accelerate the development of cancer in laboratory animals. In one
study, mice genetically altered to be predisposed to developing one
type of cancer developed more than twice as many such cancers
when they were exposed to RF energy compared to controls. There
is much uncertainty among scientists about whether results obtained
from animal studies apply to the use of mobile phones. First, it is
uncertain how to apply the results obtained in rats and mice to
humans. Second, many of the studies that showed increased tumor
development used animals that had already been treated with cancer-
causing chemicals, and other studies exposed the animals to the RF
virtually continuously--up to 22 hours per day.
For the past five years in the United States, the mobile phone industry
has supported research into the safety of mobile phones. This
research has resulted in two findings in particular that merit additional
study:
In a hospital-based, case-control study, researchers looked for an
association between mobile phone use and either glioma (a type of
brain cancer) or acoustic neuroma (a benign tumor of the nerve
sheath). No statistically significant association was found between
mobile phone use and acoustic neuroma. There was also no
association between mobile phone use and gliomas when all types
of types of gliomas were considered together. It should be noted that
the average length of mobile phone exposure in this study was less
than three years.
When 20 types of glioma were considered separately, however, an
association was found between mobile phone use and one rare type
of glioma, neuroepithelliomatous tumors. It is possible with multiple
comparisons of the same sample that this association occurred by
chance. Moreover, the risk did not increase with how often the mobile
phone was used, or the length of the calls. In fact, the risk actually
decreased with cumulative hours of mobile phone use. Most cancer
causing agents increase risk with increased exposure. An ongoing
study of brain cancers by the National Cancer Institute is expected to
bear on the accuracy and repeatability of these results.(1)
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