Saturday, December 20, 2014

Are wireless phones linked with brain cancer risk?

http://www.pathophysiologyjournal.com/article/S0928-4680(14)00064-9/abstract

While the above referenced study does find a link to a particular kind of cancer (glioma), the number of cases is very small, out of the whole population. The great disservice to wireless phone users from such reports is that it continues to perpetuate the public's fear of cancer but doesn't indicate that there are many other less threatening but still serious health effects that impact many more users of wireless phones.

Reuters 

(Reuters Health) - Swedes who talked on mobile or cordless phones for more than 25 years had triple the risk of a certain kind of brain cancer compared to those who used wireless phones for less than a year, a new study suggests.
The odds of developing glioma, an often deadly brain cancer, rose with years and hours of use, researchers reported in the journal Pathophysiology.
“The risk is three times higher after 25 years of use. We can see this clearly,” lead researcher Dr. Lennart Hardell told Reuters Health in a telephone interview.
His finding contrasts with the largest-ever study on the topic - the international Interphone study, which was conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and funded in part by cell phone companies. That study, published in 2010, failed to find strong evidence that mobile phones increased the risk of brain tumors.
Even if the odds of developing a glioma were doubled or tripled, however, the risk would still remain low.
A little more than 5 out of 100,000 Europeans (or 0.005 percent) were diagnosed with any kind of malignant brain tumor between 1995 and 2002, according to a 2012 study in the European Journal of Cancer (http://bit.ly/1xIlQam). If the rate triples, the odds rise to about 16 out of 100,000 (or 0.016 percent).