by ElvertBarnes
Short answer – Your choice. But if you do, there are many things even more likely to cause cancer that you will have to do without – sunshine, wood fires, carpentry and shift work being just a few.
The media are all over this WHO press release discussing cellphones and cancer. But they provide little context or any real data. They do what the MSM seems to do today with science/medical related areas: simply act as stenographers for whatever group puts out a PR.
So much of the good reporting is coming from the best blogs. This is where real reporting is coming from, not from stenographers. So many scientific bloggers can actually look at the data and show us what is going on.
The bloggers provide the context that so many of the MSM refuse to provide.
Could cell phones cause cancer? Possibly. Since they have only been in use for 20 years or less and cancers can take decades to appear. But the science makes this very unlikely.
For one, the electromagnetic radiation released by cell phones is of a wavelength and power that have never been shown to interact with the DNA of cells to cause the mutations found in tumor cells. In fact, we are surrounded daily by devices that emit much more powerful electromagnetic radiation than cell phones do – a microwave oven, for instance.
Second, the classification scheme of the WHO needs some context. There are 4 levels: Groups 1, 2, 3, 4 with Group 2 split into Group 2A and Group 2B.
Group 4 are for those things that probably don’t cause cancer in humans – there is one one item here: caprolactam. Yep, the WHO only knows of one thing that probably does not cause cancer in humans.
Every other thing we interact with in the world is put in a higher category, with higher possibilities of causing cancer. Remember that. The WHO only recognizes one thing in the world that probably does not cause cancer. Everything is more likely to.
Interestingly, caprolactam is mildly toxic, and can kill mice at relatively high doses. But it won’t cause cancer. Probably.
And that is the safest category from the WHO.
Group 3 is made up of things that might cause cancer or might not – we simply do not know because we do not have enough evidence.
Group 1 is for things for which there is strong evidence they cause cancer in humans – things like smoking, asbestos and alcohol.
What about Groups 2A and 2B? 2A is for things that probably are carcinogenic although this may only have been shown in animal studies, with human evidence being too limited to know for sure.
And 2B – the category for cell phones? It is for things that possibly could be carcinogenic but the evidence in both humans and animals is limited or less than sufficient.
So, think about categorizing everyday things around you. Where would milk fit in WHO’s groups? Guess what, there is a supposed link between milk and breast cancer. This would put milk in at least Group 2B if not 2A. Red meat has been shown to have an association with colorectal cancer in humans. This would put it in Group 1.
What else is in Group 1? How about solar radiation? We know that too much is bad but we need some to make vitamin D. Getting rid of milk or exposure to the sun would most likely cause greater health effects than the cancers they cause.
Group 2A includes burning wood in a fireplace. Yep, if you burn wood to keep warm you are exposing yourself to something with much greater data to support its cancer-causing potential than a cell phone. In fact, working different shifts – moving from the night shift to the day shift – is in this group also.
So, if there is going to be all this hue and cry about cell phone usage – which is only Group 2B – then why isn’t there even more for changing working conditions to prevent shift working. After all, by the WHO classification, the latter is more probably a tumor producing activity than cell phone usage.
Let’s actually look at some of the data WHO used. There have been many studies looking at this question. The majority show no correlation between cellphone use and cancers. A couple do, although there appear to be some criticisms of their methodology.
The top graph looks at studies examining less than 5 years of cell phone use and the bottom at more than 5. The types of cancers examined were brain tumors. The dots are the average from each study with the error bars representing the confidence level. That is, the researchers are 95% confident that the real value falls somewhere between the limits of those bars.
The line at one means there is no association between cell phone use and the brain tumors. Below the line suggest that cell phone use actually protects against brain tumors while above the line suggests that cell phone use is associated with higher tumor rates.
Of all the studies done, only one does not have a confidence level that intersects the ‘no effect’ line. All the rest show no statistically significant effects. Now look at the far right of each graph. Here they pool all the data from all the studies, either with or without the one outlier study. Using all these studies, we find that the average is almost exactly on the no effect line and the confidence levels are much tighter.
Removing the outlier has no statistical effect on the overall average.
The majority of studies show that there is no effect. But that one study appears to be the one that WHO is most concerned with.
As detailed online, there are also some reasons to be cautious about all of these studies. These sorts of studies rely on people’s recollection of their cell phone use; something that can be very hard to nail down. People’s recollections can be fickle.
In one of the recent studies, next-of-kin estimated how much cell phones were used by the deceased. Their recollections could be way off the path.
The data do not prove that cell phone use does not cause cancer. But the linkage is very weak and, without any model for how cell phone use might cause cancer, it seems unlikely that a stronger linkage would be found.
Finally, the cell phones in use today actually radiate much less energy that ones from just a few years ago. And there has been no increasing trend in brain cancers since cell phones began to be in common usage.
In my personal opinion, cell phone use should be in Group 2B. There are some studies – although a minority – that indicate an association. The reason for this needs to be teased out. Is it real or an artifact in the procedures used by the researchers.
Further research should delineate whether WHO should move cell phones into Group 3 – the place I htink likely – or into Group 2A.
But there are many more things to worry about that are much more likely to cause cancer. Perhaps we should start a movement to protect carpenters or those working the graveyard shift.
