Evidence "increasingly against" phone cancer risk
By Ben Hirschler
LONDON | Fri Jul 1, 2011 7:02pm EDT
(Reuters)
Despite a recent move to classify mobile phones as possibly
carcinogenic, the scientific evidence increasingly points away from a
link between their use and brain tumors, according to a new study on
Saturday.
A major review of previously published research by a committee of
experts from Britain, the United States and Sweden concluded there was
no convincing evidence of any cancer connection.
It also found a lack of established biological mechanisms by which radio
signals from mobile phones might trigger tumors.
"Although there remains some uncertainty, the trend in the accumulating
evidence is increasingly against the hypothesis that mobile phone use
can cause brain tumors in adults," the experts wrote in the journal
Environmental Health Perspectives.
The latest paper comes just two months after the World Health
Organisation's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
decided cellphone use should be classified as "possibly carcinogenic to
humans."
Anthony Swerdlow of Britain's Institute of Cancer Research, who led the
new review, told Reuters the two positions were not necessarily
contradictory, since the IARC needed to put mobile phones into a
pre-defined risk category.
"We are trying to say in plain English what we believe the relationship
is. They (IARC) were trying to classify the risk according to a pre-set
classification system," Swerdlow said.
Other things deemed by the IARC to be possibly carcinogenic include
items as diverse as lead, pickled vegetables and coffee.
Entire article at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/01/us-cancer-phones-idUSTRE7606GX20110701
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