The World Health Organization does not seem terribly worried about the effects of cell phone use on health: “None of the recent reviews have concluded that exposure to the RF fields from mobile phones or their base stations causes any adverse health consequence.” But this statement–last updated nine years ago–relies on precisely the kind of data these watchdogs suggest is flawed.
The paper’s main conclusions are: There is a “significant” risk of brain tumors from cell phone use; EMR exposure limits that have been used by governments and supported by industry are based on the false premise that EMR has no biological effects except for heating; and design flaws of the Interphone study include selection bias, insufficient latency time to expect a tumor diagnosis, unrealistic definition of what makes a “regular” cell phone user, exclusion of children and young adults from the study, exclusion of many types of brain tumors, and exclusion of people who had died or were too ill to be interviewed as the result of brain tumors.
Several other studies, many of which are referenced in the book “Cancer Biology,” including one of 195,775 workers manufacturing and testing cell phones, indicate no association between EMR exposure and brain or other nervous system cancers. But again, this book was published in 1995; time for an update?
Elizabeth Armstrong Moore is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Ore. She has contributed to Wired magazine, The Christian Science Monitor,Cheap North Face Trouser, and public radio. Her semi-obscure hobbies include unicycling, slacklining, hula-hooping, scuba diving, billiards, Sudoku, Magic the Gathering, and classical piano. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.