Study Linking Cell Phones with Brain Tumors Sparks Debate

The release of the largest study to date into the safety of cell phones has not ended speculation about the links between phone use and brain tumors — but rather it sparked a huge global debate on the issue Monday.

News stories appeared around the world based on the 10-year Interphone study carried out in 13 countries and involving more than 12,800 people worldwide, including 5,150 brain cancer patients — 2,708 with glioma brain tumors and 2,409 with meningioma brain tumors.

Release of the findings from the study, conducted by The International Agency for Research on Cancer and partly funded by the cell phone industry, have been repeatedly delayed but were due to be formally published Tuesday in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The Sunday Times reported that scientists involved in the study have admitted that more research will be needed because of their broad categorization of "heavy phone use" and also because phone users under the age of 30 were excluded.

Heavy phone use of just 30 minutes of mobile talk time a day was enough to put study participants in the top 10 percent of phone users — who were found to have an increased risk of tumors.

“Some of the questions raised by the Interphone research are puzzling,” The Sunday Times reported.

“The statistics appear to show that at lower levels of usage, mobile phones actually protect against cancer, something that even the study’s authors reject as implausible.”

Critics of the Interphone study claim omissions — such as the fact children were not included — and errors have left it deeply flawed.

They believe that the propensity of mobile phone radiation to cause cancer is much greater than the study shows.

A new piece of research, backed by the European Union, has been launched to investigate possible links between brain tumors in children and mobile phone use.

The Interphone study found no definite increased risk of glioma or meningioma tumors after 10 years of using a mobile phone, although it found "suggestions of higher risk" for the heaviest users.

"The study doesn't reveal an increased risk, but we can't conclude that there is no risk because there are enough findings that suggest a possible risk," the study's chief author, Elisabeth Cardis, told AFP.

The heaviest users , who reported using their phones on the same side of their heads, had a 40 percent higher risk for gliomas and 15 percent for meningiomas, but the researchers said "biases and errors" prevent making a causal link.

The researchers noted, however, that the latest mobile phones have lower emissions, and the popularity of hands-free devices and texting reduce exposure to the head.

The BBC also reported that some medical experts were already claiming the study is flawed because instead of monitoring participants, it asked them to try to remember exactly how much and on which ear they had used their mobiles phones over the past ten years.