Exposure to (Cell Phone) RF Radiation Linked to Tumors

Scientific American reports on a major new $25 million animal study that tested the possibility of links between cancer and chronic exposure to the type of radiation emitted from cell phones and wireless devices. The study’s author says the relationship between radiation exposure and cancer is clear. It presents some of the strongest evidence to date that such exposure is associated with the formation of rare cancers in at least two cell types in the brains and hearts of rats.

The results, which were posted on a prepublication website run by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, are poised to reignite controversy about how such everyday exposure might affect human health.

Researchers at the U.S. National Toxicology Program, a federal interagency group under the National Institutes of Health, led the study. They chronically exposed rodents to carefully calibrated radiofrequency (RF) radiation levels designed to roughly emulate what humans experience in their daily lives. The animals were placed in specially built chambers that dosed them with varying amounts and types of this radiation for approximately nine hours per day throughout their two-year lifespans.

“This is by far—far and away—the most carefully done cell phone bioassay, a biological assessment. This is a classic study that is done for trying to understand cancers in humans,” says Christopher Portier, a retired head of NTP who helped launch the study and still sometimes works for the federal government as a consultant scientist. “There will have to be a lot of work after this to assess if it causes problems in humans, but the fact that you can do it in rats will be a big issue. It actually has me concerned, and I’m an expert.”

The International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2011 classified RF radiation as a possible human carcinogen. But data from human studies has been “inconsistent,” NTP has said on its website. Such studies are also hampered by the realities of testing in humans, such as recall bias—meaning cancer patients have to try to remember their cell phone use from years before, and how they held their handsets. Those data gaps prompted the NTP to engage in planning these new animal studies back in 2009.

The researchers found that as the thousands of rats in the new study were exposed to greater intensities of RF radiation, more of them developed rare forms of brain and heart cancer that could not be easily explained away, exhibiting a direct dose-response relationship. Some of the rats had glioma—a tumor of the glial cells in the brain—or schwannoma of the heart. Furthering concern about the findings: In prior epidemiological studies of humans and cell phone exposure, both types of tumors have also cropped up as associations.

In contrast, none of the control rats—those not exposed to the radiation—developed such tumors. But complicating matters was the fact that the findings were mixed across sexes: More such lesions were found in male rats than in female rats. The tumors in the male rats “are considered likely the result of whole-body exposure” to this radiation, the study authors write.

Based on these findings, Portier said that the relationship between radiation exposure and cancer is clear. “I would call it a causative study, absolutely. They controlled everything in the study. It’s [the cancer] because of the exposure.”

In the study rats were exposed to RF at 900 megahertz. There were three test groups with each species of each sex, tested at different radiation intensities (1.5, 3 and 6 W/Kg), and one control group. (The lowest-intensity level roughly approximates the levels allowed by U.S. cell phone companies, which is 1.6 W/Kg). Rodents across all the test groups were chronically exposed to RF for approximately nine hours spread out over the course of the day.

The experiments also included both types of modulations emitted from today’s cell phones: Code Division Multiple Access and Global System for Mobile. (Modulations are the way the information is carried, so although the total radiation levels were roughly the same across both types, there were differences in how radiation is emitted from the antenna—either a higher exposure for a relatively short time or a lower exposure for a longer time.) Overall, there was no statistically significant difference between the number of tumors that developed in the animals exposed to CDMA versus GSM modulations.

The question is, ‘Should one be concerned?’ The answer is clearly ‘Yes,” says David Carpenter, a public health clinician and the director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany.

This animal study was designed primarily to answer questions about cancer risks humans might experience when they use phones themselves, as opposed to smaller levels of exposure from wireless devices in the workplace, or from living or working near cell phone towers. But it may have implications for those smaller levels as well, Portier says.

The findings shocked many scientists who had been closely tracking the study. “I was surprised because I had thought it was a waste of money to continue to do animal research in this area. There had been so many studies before that had pretty consistently not shown elevations in cancer. In retrospect the reason for that is that nobody maintained a sufficient number of animals for a sufficient period of time to get results like this,” Carpenter says.

There are safety steps individuals can take, Carpenter says. Using the speakerphone, keeping the phone on the desk instead of on the body and using a wired headset whenever possible would help limit RF exposure.