p2pnet view Mobiles:- The “largest-ever international research conducted on a possible link between brain cancer and other tumors in the head and mobile use”, showed “no increased risk of brain tumours among those who regularly used mobiles for 10 years”, said The Local yesterday.
But it’s far too soon to believe cellphone use is guaranteed safe, says the Montreal Gazette.
The Canadian-led study also found “some evidence of an elevated risk of glioma” in the 10% who spent the most time on their cellphones — “with the highest point estimates seen for tumours in the temporal lobe and for subjects who reported having used their mobile phone mainly on the same side as that on which the tumour occurred”, says the story.
The results were published in the International Journal of Epidemiology “alongside the analysis by Rodolfo Saracci of Italy’s National Research Council and Jonathan Samet of the University of Southern California”, it says, going on >>>
“None of today’s established carcinogens, including tobacco, could have been firmly identified as increasing risk in the first 10 years or so since first exposure,” Saracci and Samet said of the “inherent limitation” of the Canadian-led study involving 13 countries.
“In high-income countries, mobile phone use began in the 1980s but was not widely prevalent until the mid-1990s. The cancer cases in the study were diagnosed between 2000 and 2004. As a consequence, less than five per cent of the meningioma cases and less than nine per cent of the glioma cases occurred more than 10 years since start of mobile phone use,” Saracci and Samet said.
“Ionizing radiation is a recognized cause of brain tumours but except for rare instances the radiation induced cases occur on average after 10-20 years since the time of first exposure,” so there’s an “inherent limitation” in the study.
In Canada, the number of cellphone subscribers “ballooned from 525,662 in 1990 to over 8.7 million in 2000. Today, it’s close to 23 million, according to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association”, says the Montreal Gazette, addingZ:
“And Merrill Lynch estimates that the average monthly use in Canada is just over 400 minutes, totalling about 13 minutes a day.”
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.