2018-05-28 13:45:48
Some topics in science require decades of study to be elucidated. One of them is whether radiation from mobile phones causes cancer. A recent and not well documented article by Vincent Navarro (1), who suggests that something similar to what happened with tobacco may be happening with mobile phones, has heated up the debate a bit more in recent days.
We are going to get back on this debate, which is always of interest because who else uses the mobile phone several hours a day. Beware: Two studies conducted over more than a decade, recently published, and costing more than $25 million, indicate, but do not prove, that radiation emitted from mobile phones can cause various types of cancer in laboratory rats exposed to these radio frequencies for most of their life (about two years). The studies have been carried out, using thousands of rats and mice, by two international groups, one of them consisting of researchers from the National Toxicology Program of the US National Institutes of Health (2); who studied the effects of close exposure to radio frequencies, that is, those that come from devices that we manipulate; the other, by researchers from the Italian Ramazzini Institute (3), who studied the effects of radio frequencies coming not only from mobile phones, but also from tablets and computers. The results have also been reviewed by an independent panel of leading scientific experts, who even agreed to extend the authors’ conclusions and indicate that the existence of an association between exposure to radiofrequency and the development of cancer in rodents is clear. The Food and Drug Agency (FDA) from the US is analyzing this data to decide if new recommendations to the public on the use of mobile phones are relevant (4).
The tumor that has shown the most significant association with exposure to radiofrequency from telephones is schwannoma, a rare type of cancer that develops in the nerve tissue associated with the heart. This tumor showed a significantly higher incidence in male rats, but not in female rats or mice. However, other types of tumors (including lymphomas and cancers affecting the prostate, skin, lungs, liver, and brain) also had an increased incidence, although the association was not significant.
References:
(1)
(2) https://doi.org/10.1109/TEMC.2017.2665039
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
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