Everyone anticipated that Interphone wouldn't offer any definitive findings, and they were right. "An increased risk of brain cancer [has not been] established," said Christopher Wild, the director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, which coordinated the study.
But, there are "suggestions of an increased risk" at "the highest exposure levels," according to the abstract of the paper published by the International Journal of Epidemiology.
How should those "suggestions" be interpreted?
At the very least, the risks are greater than many believed only a few years ago. In a series of interviews, a number of the members of the Interphone project told Microwave News that they now see the risk among long-term users as being larger than when the study began. Some think the risk warrants serious attention.
"To me, there's certainly smoke there," said Elisabeth Cardis, who leads the Interphone project. "Overall, my opinion is that the results show a real effect." Cardis is with the Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL) in Barcelona. She moved there two years ago after working on Interphone at IARC for close to a decade.
"There is evidence that there may be a risk; Interphone has made that a little stronger," said Bruce Armstrong of the University of Sydney, another member of Interphone. "It shows some indication of an increased risk of gliomas, but I cannot say this with certainty." (A glioma is a type of brain tumor.)
Siegal Sadetzki, the Israeli member of Interphone, goes further. She pointed out that while the risks are inconclusive, a number of the results show some consistency. These include increased risks among the heaviest users, the fact that the risks were highest on the side of the head the phone was usually used and that the tumors were in the temporal lobe of the brain, which is closest to the ear. Sadetzki is with the Gertner Institute outside Tel-Aviv. "The data are not strong enough for a causal interpretation, but they are sufficient to support precautionary policies," she said.
One strong dissenting voice is that of Interphone's Maria Feychting of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. "The use of mobile phones for over ten years shows no increased risk of brain tumors," stated a press release issued by the Karolinska. Feychting declined to be interviewed for this article.
The Interphone study included 2,708 cases of glioma and 2,409 of meningioma, another type of brain tumor, with a total of over 5,634 controls —from 13 countries. Eligible cases were patients diagnosed between 2000 and 2004. (Meningioma was not linked to cell phone use.) It is the largest study of cell phone and tumors ever done. The total budget of the study, which got underway in 2000, was €19.2 million (~US$25 million). Funding came from the European Commission (€3.74 million) and the cell phone industry (€5.5 million), as well as other sources.
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Here's the link:
http://www.microwavenews.com/Interphone.Main.html
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