Cell phone cancer implications - research summary

Cell phone cancer implications:

Although brain tumour cases have been rising fairly steadily over the last fifteen years, these are not the most likely outcome of high levels of mobile communications handset use. In 1998 a study reported that brain tumour incidence was rising in Western Australia and questioned whether mobile phone use might be responsible [5]. However, if there are long term large-scale cancer implications, then it is more likely that they will be adult myeloid leukaemias and multiple melanomas. Back in the early 1980s Sam Milham reported excess leukaemias among amateur radio operators, with deaths from acute and chronic myeloid leukaemias nearly three times higher than expected. We do know of a number of digital (GSM) phone users who have developed Hodgkin's Disease in the lymph glands in their neck on the side where they normally used their phones for a couple of hours each day [6]. In 1980, Dr John Holt had a letter published [7]. This showed that between 1951-59, 50% of patients with CML in Queensland survived for 55 months following diagnosis. In 1960 and 1961 three large TV broadcast stations were commissioned in the area. In the period 1963-67, 50% of patients with CML only survived for 21 months. This dramatic change could not be explained by any medical personnel, protocol or therapy changes. In the mid-1980s Stanislaw Szmigielski reported that Polish military personnel exposed to RF energy showed elevated leukaemia levels. He has just published a 1996 update [8]. This is a study of all Polish military personnel for 15 years (1971-85), approximately 128,000 people each year. Of these about 3700 (3%) were considered to be occupationally exposed to radio-frequency and / or microwave radiation. The largest increases were found for chronic myelocytic leukaemia (CML), with an astounding increase (Odds Ratio) of 13.9 (95% CI 6.72-22.12, p<0.001), acute myeloblastic leukaemia (AML) with an OR of 8.62 (95% CI 3.54-13.67, p<0.001), and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas with an OR of 5.82 (95% CI 3.54-13.67, p<0.001).

In 1996 Lai & Singh showed single and double DNA strand breaks in brain cells of rats exposed to 2.45GHz SARs of 1.2 W/Kg (comparable with levels in the heads of mobile phone users), giving rise to real concerns. [9] If someone is completely healthy, and has a strong immune system, then mobile-phone use may well not give them long-term health problems. Some people can smoke twenty cigarettes per day for fifty years and not develop lung cancer, and yet the dangers of smoking are now generally accepted, even by the manufacturers. It has been repeatedly shown that a few minutes exposure to cell phone type radiation can transform a 5% active cancer into a 95% active cancer for the duration of the exposure and for a short time afterwards. [10]

A team of scientists funded by the Australian communications giant, Telstra, to investigate claimed links between cellular phones and cancer has turned up probably the most significant finding of adverse health effects yet. The study looked at 200 mice, half exposed and half not, to pulsed digital phone radiation. The work was conducted at the Royal Adelaide Hospital by Dr Michael Repacholi, Professor Tony Basten, Dr Alan Harris and statistician Val Gebski, and it revealed a highly-significant doubling of cancer rates in the exposed group. [11]

The mice were subject to GSM-type pulsed microwaves at a power-density roughly equal to a cell-phone transmitting for two thirty minute periods each day; this was a pulsed transmission as from a digital cell-phone handset. Using NRPB figures most GSM digital cell-phones will be putting between 10 and 30 times more radiation into the user's head than the Repacholi mice were subject to! [12] If there are cancer connections with the use of mobile phones, they are most likely to be expressed in adult leukaemias which typically take between 10 and 30 years to appear and be diagnosed. It is therefore unlikely that the trend will start to be seen for at least another five years, although the harm is being done now. Short term exposure of rats is no answer. Cancer is being increasingly recognised as an organisational systems problem, and no short term speeded up animal experiments are likely to give the same results as extended period chronic exposure to the human bio-system.

Initial (shorter term) problems with very important health and work efficiency implications We now receive frequent calls from regular mobile-phone users reporting headaches, loss of concentration, skin tingling or burning or twitching, eye “tics”, very poor short-term memory, buzzing in their head at night, and other less common effects. Headaches often come first and/or skin effects. Then concentration and short-term memory tends to deteriorate. At first it can be missing the turning off a motorway that you intended to take. Then it is forgetting appointments. It usually firstly affects learning or remembering NEW facts, similar to early signs of dementia. Things you learnt long ago are still usually there, but new things just don’t seem to go in to your memory any more. Users also report excessive tiredness. Many reports are from engineers who used their phone extensively and were very sceptical of EMF adverse health effects until they started to experience them. The symptoms bear a close resemblance to those in a study of a Latvian pulsed radio location station which emits 24 short VHF pulses of 154 - 162MHz each second. In a study of 966 children aged 9-18 years old, motor function, memory and attention were significantly worse in the exposed group. Children living in front of the station had less developed memory and attention, their reaction time was slower and their neuromuscular endurance was decreased. The RMS field levels at their houses were low, typically only 1V/m, and a maximum level of 6V/m or 10mW/cm2. [13] In a study near the Latvian radio station, differences in micronucleii levels in peripheral erythrocytes were found to be statistically significant in the exposed and control groups. This is possible evidence of genetic changes caused by non-thermal levels of pulsed radio-frequency radiation.[14] Reports linking RF energy with asthenias had been reported by Charlotte Silverman back in 1973, and again in 1980, as what she called “radio wave sickness”. [15]