“When I was reporting my March 2010 PopSci feature story on the possible health effects of cell phone radiation, I was particularly interested in learning about the Interphone project, a collection of 13 different national studies coordinated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization.
Interphone is the largest completed analysis to date of brain tumor (glioma and meningioma) risk in relation to mobile phone use. When I was writing my piece, none of the scientists I interviewed could or would say much about the study, since it had yet to be published. So not much about Interphone ended up in my story. But when I asked one source familiar with the study’s progress what we would learn once the results appeared, this person said: ‘We’ll learn how to do better studies.’
Well, the Interphone study has finally appeared and, unfortunately, my source was right.
The paper, published this week in the International Journal of Epidemiology, concludes: ‘Overall, no increase in risk of either glioma or meningioma was observed in association with use of mobile phones. There were suggestions of an increased risk of glioma, and much less so meningioma, at the highest exposure levels … However, biases and errors limit the strength of the conclusions we can draw from these analyses and prevent a causal interpretation.’”
Read more at Popsci.com (thanks, SuZi)
…actually, if you wanna completely misrepresent the figures, you can either go the way of the mathematically illiterate jurnos crib you figures from the same source, and then claim there\’s a 40% increased risk of cancer, or the way of the sceptical joker, and claim that mobile phones actually reduce the risks! Great article here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/18/un_mobile_emf_study_wrong_answer/
Hi Darren,
What ‘s your interest and particular angle on this?
Bullshit. See INDEPENDENT studies on this, not those conducted by IARC and WHO coz they’re fake.
well, sorta. this is from the first comment on the article:
“The Interphone study has several major design flaws, one of which is the fact that it did not even examine exposure in children, who are one of the most sensitive segments of the population.”
the commenter also mentions that this study was heavily funded by the wireless industry. caveat emptor.
Yeah absolutely.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but WHO is the last organism on Earth to be trusted when it comes to health issues. See Swine Flu, Vaccine Industry … ad infinitum
There’s another study coming up re mobile phones and health risk that I’ve been asked to take in. However I think I am more likely to develop RSI!
* take part in *
Don’t kid yourself. We’re being fried. And it’s not for the greater good of humanity or to make world communications easier – it’s to make money. So don’t expect the truth for a long time yet, while there’s still money to be made.
What will they do with all the “Phoning Kills” labels?