Cell phones and cancer have been linked to each other by people for a great number of years now. All the studies on this topic have been inconclusive and it is the first time that new studies might actually have some solid ground to make new claims. They show that cell phone radiation can cause cancer in lab rats. This has sparked a new debate to the impact of cell phone radiation on humans.
The pair of studies were conducted by the United States National Toxicology Program and found that the exposure to radiation can cause heart tumors in male rats and brain tumors were also discovered in some rats. This goes against what was previously believed.
The US Federal government believed that cell phones can’t cause cancer as they emit non-ionizing radiation. It is believed that ionizing radiation from things like CT scans can cause cancer at high enough doses. It was widely believed that non-ionizing radiation wasn’t strong enough to break chemical bonds and damage DNA.
It was the size of the studies that drew attention to them. The cancer was not found in just a handful of mice. The organizations conducting the studies observed 3,000 mice and rats of both sexes over two years. This makes it the largest RF radiation and its association with cancer ever conducted. A team from the Ramazzini Institute in Italy also carried out a similar study by studying the effects on nearly 2,500 rats from birth to death.
According to Jon Samet, a professor of preventive medicine and dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, these studies “confirm that RF radiation exposure has biological effects” with some of those effects “relevant to carcinogenesis.” Samet was not involved in the studies.
These studies have gained a lot of attention. Even though they are groundbreaking, they are specific to rats and it is still unknown what effects cell phone radiation have on humans. Stephen Chanock directs the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute and remains skeptical of the study. Chanock’s spokesperson told Scientific American in an interview that the data “haven’t accumulated to the point that we can say something meaningful about them.”
“Cell phones have been around a long time,” Chanock said. “We are by no means dismissing the evidence, and the Ramazzini study raises interesting questions. But it has to be factored in with other reports, and this is still work in progress.”
These two studies are the latest developments we have for now and we might see further studies on cell phone radiation build upon these.