Last week the results from the mother of all medical studies was finally released – the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Interphone Study Group concluded their research on the effects of mobile phone use on the risk of brain cancer. The group surveyed more than 13,000 mobile phone users from 13 countries over the past decade and investigated any possible links between usage and two main types of brain tumors; glioma and meningioma.
With a total research budget of $20 million and a sample population size that would send statisticians into a frenzy, this study was hoped to finally lay to rest whether or not using your cell phone does in fact give you brain cancer. The results; inconclusive. Overall, the group concluded that radio-frequency energy emitted by mobile phones does not increase the risk of either types of brain tumor, although a slightly greater risk of cancer among ‘heavy’ users was found.
Where the group is getting attacked is the way in which they collected their data, and how no one is apparently able to give a concise definition of what puts someone in the supposedly risky ‘heavy user’ category. Panel member Daniel Kewski explains their data collection method, “If we asked you to be a participant, we would sit down with you and ask you to try and remember every cell phone that you had used in your entire life, and then we would ask you how many times a day you made phone calls, and how long you were on the phone for each of those calls on average. So your recall of your cell phone utilization patterns may not be perfect.” This method has been called ‘sketchy’ at best. So when a reported 40 percent risk increase for glioma amongst ‘heavy’ users is reported.
This risk group includes people who claimed to be on the phone for a minimum of 30 minutes a day, seven days a week. But this group only accounted for about 10 percent of the entire sample group the panel looked at. In the end, it all works out to no great danger. Otis Brawley, chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society says that there’s insufficient evidence to confirm the risk increase, and even if it did the problem would be dwarfed by more other serious health concerns. “If you use the worst case studies that we have to date, it’s about 300 additional brain tumors per year in the United States,” he explains. “Compare that with the fact that we have definite data to show that 3,000 deaths are caused by auto accidents due to cell phones in the United States every year.”
Even though you’re more likely to wrap your car around a tree while calling someone before you get a brain tumor, there are some recommended precautions made by the panel. Mobile phone users should use wired earplugs or a wireless Bluetooth device so as to avoid holding their phone next to their head while making calls, as these methods emit less radio frequency than the phone itself.
The group says that they’ll look at their collected data in further detail in a years time, which gives anti-cell phone skeptic groups plenty of time to further rant and rave about how their still convinced that cell phone usage is guaranteed to give you brain cancer. In the meantime, odds are cell phones will simply fall back into the category of things that may or may not give you cancer, but we still use anyways, right along with Nalgene bottles and bad Chinese food. Bon Appetit!
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