Cell Phone Revolution: Economic Boon – Brain Cancer Risk ???

 

22 November 2010.

 

22 November 2010.

There is no question that wireless technologies — and cell phones in particular —

have made possible a huge jump into the future in emerging and frontier markets,

creating an advanced communications infrastructure where none of any sort had previously existed,

especially in places like China, India, Brazil, SE Asia, Africa and elsewhere.

At the same time, medical researchers in the US are finding disturbing signs that

cell phone radiation MAY be linked to an uptick in certain kind of cancers.

While no one should stop using cell phones, people all over the world might start to pay more attention

to the so-called “small print” warnings about radiation found in instruction manuals put out by US and other cell phone makers.

The potential economic stakes for that industry are huge:

According to the C.T.I.A.-The Wireless Association, the national cell phone lobbying group,

Americans alone talk for 2.26 trillion minutes annually, generating $109 billion for the wireless carriers.

And wireless is rapidly becoming the leading element of the telecommunications revolution in places like India, as we have discussed.

The legal departments of cellphone manufacturers slip a warning about holding the phone against your head or body

into the fine print of the little slip that you toss aside when unpacking your phone.

Apple, for example, doesn’t want iPhones to come closer than 5/8 of an inch;

Research In Motion, BlackBerry’s manufacturer, is still more cautious:

keep a distance of about an inch.

The warnings may be missed by an awful lot of customers —

and it seems the cell phone companies want to keep it that way.

For example, even the high-tech-besotted city of San Francisco

passed an ordinance this year that requires cellphone retailers to prominently post

the unit of measurement for radiofrequency exposure, the specific absorption rate, or SAR.

This angered the C.T.I.A. so much it announced that it would no longer schedule trade shows in the city.

The cellphone instructions-cum-warnings have been raised by Devra Davis,

an epidemiologist who has worked for the University of Pittsburgh

and has published a book about cellphone radiation, “Disconnect.”

Many had assumed that radiation specialists had long ago established that worries about low-energy radiation were unfounded.

Her book, however, surveys the scientific investigations and concludes that the question is not yet settled.

Brain cancer is a concern that Ms. Davis takes up.

Over all, there has not been a general increase in its incidence since cellphones arrived.

But the average masks an increase in brain cancer in the 20-to-29 age group and a drop for the older population.

“Most cancers have multiple causes,” she says,

but she points to laboratory research that suggests mechanisms by which

low-energy radiation could damage cells in ways that could possibly lead to cancer.

Children are more vulnerable to radiation than adults, Ms. Davis and other scientists point out.

Radiation that penetrates only two inches into the brain of an adult

will reach much deeper into the brains of children

because their skulls are thinner and their brains contain more absorptive fluid.

No field studies have been completed to date on cellphone radiation and children, she says.

Henry Lai, a research professor in the bioengineering department at the University of Washington,

began laboratory radiation studies in 1980 and found that

rats exposed to radiofrequency radiation had damaged brain DNA.

He maintains a database that holds 400 scientific papers on possible biological effects of radiation from wireless communication.

He found that 28 percent of studies with cellphone industry funding showed some sort of effect,

while 67 percent of studies without such funding did so.

“That’s not trivial,” he said.

The Federal Communications Commission mandates that the SAR, specific absorption rate of radiation, as above,

produced by phones be no more than 1.6 watts per kilogram.

One study listed by Mr. Lai found effects like loss of memory in rats exposed to SAR values

in the range of 0.0006 to 0.06 watts per kilogram.

“I did not expect to see effects at low levels,” he said.

The CTIA, not surprisingly, maintains that all F.C.C.-approved phones are perfectly safe.

John Walls, the association’s vice president for public affairs, said:

“What science tells us is, ‘If the sign on the highway says safe clearance is 12 feet,’

it doesn’t matter if your vehicle is 4 feet, 6 feet or 10 feet tall; you’re going to pass through safely.

The same theory applies to SAR values and wireless devices.”

The association has set up a separate Web site to put across its case.

Four attractive young people are seen on the home page, each with a cellphone pressed against the ear —

and all four are beaming as they listen.

By this visual evidence, cellphone use seems to be correlated with elation, not cancer.

The largest study of cellphone use and brain cancer has been the Interphone International Case-Control Study,

in which researchers in 13 developed countries (but not the United States) participated.

It interviewed brain cancer patients, 30 to 59 years old, from 2000 to 2004,

then cobbled together a control group of people who had not regularly used a cellphone.

The study concluded that using a cellphone seemed to decrease the risk of brain tumors,

which the authors acknowledged was “implausible” and a product of the study’s methodological shortcomings.

The authors included some disturbing data in an appendix available only online.

These showed that subjects who used a cellphone 10 or more years

doubled the risk of developing brain gliomas, a type of tumor.

The 737 minutes Americans talk on cellphones monthly, on average, according to the C.T.I.A. —

and much more in other countries, as simple on-the-street observation in places like Singapore confirms —

makes today’s typical user indistinguishable from the heavy user of 10 years ago.

Ms. Davis recommends keeping a phone out of close proximity to the head or body, by using wired headsets or the phone’s speaker.

Children should text rather than call, she said,

and pregnant women should keep phones away from the abdomen.

The F.C.C. concurs about the best way to avoid exposure.

It is not by choosing a phone with a marginally lower SAR, it says,

but rather by holding the cellphone “away from the head or body.”

It’s advice that many find hard to put into practice.

The comforting sight of seeing everyone with phones pressed against their ears, makes the risk seem abstract.

But Ms. Davis, citing unsettling findings from research in Israel, France, Sweden and Finland, says,

“I do think I’m looking at an epidemic in slow motion,” according to this disturbing article in the New York Times.

 

David Caploe PhD

Chief Political Economist

EconomyWatch.com

President / acalaha.com