Cell Phone Cancer: Urban Myth?

Cell phone disease is starting to look like a 20th-century urban myth.

In a study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers who interviewed cancer patients said they found no link between cellular telephone use and brain cancer.

Experts said the study by the American Health Foundation in Valhalla, N.Y., was the most definitive yet on the subject and strengthened scientists' belief that cell phone radiation has no role in causing cancer.

"This is the most complete study," said Joseph Roti Roti, a radiation oncologist at Washington University in St Louis who did not participate in the study.

Some Caveats

The JAMA study authors stopped short of debunking the cell phone-cancer connection, saying more study is needed to examine cell phone use over long periods of time.

"The current study shows no effect with short-term exposure to cellular telephones," the authors wrote. "Further studies are needed to account for longer induction periods, especially for slow-growing tumors."

And the researchers said that they only could speak definitely about "analog" cell phones, not newer, digital models. The industry says digital phones accounted for about half of the 80 million wireless phones in use in the United States at the end of 1999.

Experts say digital phones are probably less worrisome because they generally give off less microwave energy, according to a spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, an industry group. The researchers noted that studies on the health effects of digital cell phones are under way in Europe.

Warnings Will Continue

The new research by itself is unlikely to silence concerns about mobile phones. It may take longer to resolve suspicions raised in earlier studies that suggested that cell phone antennas sent cancer into their users' heads along with messages through the air.

In an attempt to respond to public concerns, the wireless industry over the summer announced it would voluntarily disclose the radiation levels emitted by their phones.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs sell cell phone shields that purport to filter radiation.

Not That Kind Of Radiation

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The radiation that comes out of cell phones is not the sort that makes one glow in the dark. Only much higher frequency forms of radiation are known to cause severe health problems -- DNA damage that can lead to cancer.

For the sake of comparison:

• Cell phones emit radiofrequency (RF) radiation on a frequency usually between 800 and 900 megahertz, sometimes as high as 1910 megahertz.
• That frequency is millions of times higher than is emitted by extremely low frequency power lines. Those ELF power lines once were suspected of being linked to leukemia, but scientists now generally believe there is no link.
• Cell phones radiation is also eight to 17 times a higher frequency that the radiation that goes into your car radio.
• Higher still are microwave ovens, whose frequency is typically 2,450 megahertz. Microwave ovens have not been determined to be carcinogenic.
• The frequencies known to cause DNA damage -- "ionizing" radiation -- are much higher. Those include X-rays, whose frequency is many millions of times higher than cell phones.

How The Research Worked

In the new study, researchers attempted to see if people who contracted brain cancer had a correlating use of cell phones.

The team interviewed 469 people with primary brain cancer and 422 people without brain cancer. The patients were at three New York hospitals, one in Rhode Island and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Researchers asked the patients how regularly they had used cell phones. Their conclusion: There was no connection between how often they used the phones and how likely they were to contract brain cancer.

The researchers also noted which side of their head the patients usually held the phone to and compared that to which side of their brain they developed tumors on.

Their findings were intriguing but contradictory. When the patients had cerebral tumors, those tumors were more likely to occur on the same side of their head that they favored when they held up their cell phones. But the opposite was true with temporal lobe cancer: More of those types of tumors occurred on the opposite side of the head from the one the patients held their phones to.

To view the full report in the Dec. 20, 2000, Journal of the American Medical Association, click here.