WashPost. Study: Cell Phone Use May Have Cancer Link
By John Schwartz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 22, 1999; Page E01
Preliminary results from research funded by the cellular telephone industry
suggests there may be a correlation between cell phone use and cancer,
according to the director of the program. The study found possible
connections both in biological tests and statistical analyses of cell phone
users.
The findings are at odds with many previous studies, which found no such
link. But at a time when use of cell phones is exploding -- roughly 70
million were in use in the United States as of December -- the findings will
enter the debate over whether the phones' radio emissions can be harmful.
The data, while "important," only suggest that more research is necessary,
said George Carlo, chairman of the industry-funded Wireless Technology
Research group. "We're now in a gray area that we've never been in
before with this. When we're in a gray area, the best thing to do is let the
public know about the findings so that they can make their own judgment,"
he said.
An official of the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the safety
of cell phones, agreed. "These results seem to have been done well -- the
question now is, 'Okay, we've got a result. What do we do with it? How
do we follow through?' " said Elizabeth D. Jacobson, deputy director of
science at the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health.
Jacobson and other FDA officials have been briefed on the WTR results;
Jacobson said that if a clear health threat emerged from the studies, she
and the agency would move quickly to address the problem.
In this case, however, Jacobson said the results make a strong case for
conducting more research but not for taking regulatory action at this time:
"We didn't see what we thought were public health problems," she said.
The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association would not comment
on the record about the new research, but has called for further studies to
be conducted under the direction of the federal government and
international health agencies.
Early-model cell phones were mounted in cars, with the transmission
antenna and its radio waves far away from the user. But in the 1990s, as
handsets held directly against the ear became common, some people
began to worry that the radiation might be harmful.
The debate broke into the open when a Florida man went on the "Larry
King Live" program in 1993 and alleged that a cellular telephone caused
his wife's brain cancer. Regulators and scientists subsequently have
struggled to shed light on whether the phones have any health effects.
Radio waves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes
kinds of radiation that are clearly carcinogenic, such as X-rays, and others
that are harmless, such as visible light. Also, cell phone users -- who tend
to be more prosperous than the general population -- might share other
risk factors for cancer that have not yet been subjected to scrutiny.
The industry formed WTR in 1993 to conduct a $25 million series of
independent studies and hired Carlo to coordinate the effort.
The new findings are the first major disclosure by the group of the results
of its research. These and all WTR-sponsored findings to date will be
presented at a colloquium in Long Beach, Calif., on June 19 and 20.
One line of WTR research involved the examination of cells from various
animals that had been subjected to radiation from four types of cell phones.
The research, conducted at Stanford University and Integrated Laboratory
Systems in Research Triangle Park, N.C., put the cells through 46 tests for
cancer-inducing genetic damage. Most produced the usual result in cell
phone research: no sign of cancer-causing damage.
But one battery of eight tests, known as a "micronucleus assay," on human
blood cells did indicate chromosomal damage.
"At this point there is very little you can make of" this finding, said Graham
Hook, a program director at Integrated Laboratory Systems. "It's difficult
to interpret," and might be attributable to other factors. The real role of
such tests, he said, "is to tell you what needs to be further tested."
Some scientists who had been briefed on the results by Carlo said they
would reserve judgment until they could see all of the data after it had been
through the peer-review process.
"It's interesting, but not worthy of too much attention until it gets
published," said W. Gregory Lotz, a researcher at the National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health.
Previous studies that indicated a cancer risk have not been borne out. In
the mid-1990s, researchers Henry Lai and N.P. Singh at the University of
Washington, Seattle, using a test known as the "comet assay," found DNA
breaks in cells exposed to wireless phone radiation. Subsequent attempts
by Joseph Roti Roti of Washington University in St. Louis to duplicate the
work were unsuccessful, an indication that the first work might have been
flawed.
"The fairly simple bottom line is in the work that I've done, I've found
nothing that would alarm me, or alert me to a possible hazardous health
effect," Roti Roti said in an interview. "To me, the biggest hazard with the
cell phone is not paying attention to driving your car when you're using
one."
Other lines of research that WTR has pursued are based in epidemiology
-- they look for patterns of disease in larger populations of cell phone
users.
One WTR-sponsored epidemiology study by Joshua Muscat of the
American Health Foundation showed a near tripling of a statistically
significant risk of a rare kind of tumor called a neurocytoma among cell
phone users, compared with people who do not use cell phones.
Neurocytomas grow from the periphery of the brain inward. The result of
that study, however, is undercut by the fact that the data did not show that
the risk of neurocytoma rose with the amount of cell phone use, which
researchers would have expected to find. In fact, greater exposure was
associated with lower risk.
Another epidemiological study, also not published yet, found that
right-handed people who used cell phones and had brain tumors tended to
have them on the right side of the head -- a result that could show a link to
radiation from the phones. However, no such correlation appeared in
left-handed cancer patients.
Other major scientific exploration of a possible link between cell phones
and cancer is being carried out at the National Cancer Institute and the
International Agency for Research on Cancer in Europe.
Carlo, who uses a cellular phone with a plug-in earpiece that allows him to
talk without holding the device to his head, said he chose to issue the
results before publication so that government and industry could take the
next step in research. "What we don't want to do two, three, four years
from now is to say, 'God -- this was the tip of the iceberg, and we didn't
see it!' "
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
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