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09/25/2007: "Extended cell phone usage causes brain tumors"

The French study team, which includes Elisabeth Cardis, who is in charge of the overall Interphone project, has found high rates of brain tumors (gliomas) among heavy cell phone users. It's not a significant result, statistically speaking, but what is noteworthy is that this excess was apparent regardless of the way a heavy user was defined. As the researchers themselves put it: There is a "general tendency" for a greater glioma risk for "long-term users, heavy users [and] users with the largest numbers of telephones."

For example, those who owned more than one cell phone had twice the risk of getting a glioma, as did those who had used a cell phone for the longest period of time (over about four years). Those who were on a cell phone for the longest total amount of time (260 hours or more) had 80% more gliomas, about the same increase as those whose average cell phone call lasted the longest (over five-and-a half minutes). And those who had made the most phone calls (over 5,100) had about 50% more gliomas. In each category, the heaviest user had the highest risk.

If the French results hold up, it would indicate that cell phone-induced brain tumors can develop more quickly than current hypotheses suggest. Combined analyses of the Interphone data from five European countries -Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, U.K.- point to a latency of ten years or more for both acoustic neuroma and gliomas. And while a second team led by Sweden's Lennart Hardell and Kjell Hansson Mild have reported a ten-year latency, some of their earlier papers have pointed to shorter latencies (see for instance this 2003 paper).

[ First commercialize a technological innovation, then profit, and then deny all liability when the evidence of unwanted side effects escalates. ]

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