Mobile phone use, exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic field, and brain tumour: a case–control study

Abstract

In a case -control study in Japan of brain tumours in relation to mobile phone use, we used a novel approach for estimating the specific absorption rate (SAR) inside the tumour, taking account of spatial relationships between tumour localisation and intracranial radiofrequency distribution. Personal interviews were carried out with 88 patients with glioma, 132 with meningioma, and 102 with pituitary adenoma (322 cases in total), and with 683 individually matched controls. All maximal SAR values were below 0.1 W kg À1 , far lower than the level at which thermal effects may occur, the adjusted odds ratios (ORs) for regular mobile phone users being 1.22 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.63 -2.37) for glioma and 0.70 (0.42 -1.16) for meningioma. When the maximal SAR value inside the tumour tissue was accounted for in the exposure indices, the overall OR was again not increased and there was no significant trend towards an increasing OR in relation to SAR-derived exposure indices. A non-significant increase in OR among glioma patients in the heavily exposed group may reflect recall bias. British Journal of Cancer (2008) The rapid increase in mobile phone use has raised public concern about their safety (Rothman et

Measured radiofrequency exposure during various mobile-phone use scenarios

“…Only recently have epidemiologic studies attempted to characterize exposure through methods that estimate SAR values for regions of the brain where a tumor is located (Takebayashi et al, 2008;Gosselin et al, 2009). Such exposure estimates might provide for a more accurate and less biased assessment of the potential health risks potentially attributable to mobile phone use.…”

Mobile Phones and Head Tumours: A Critical Analysis of Case-Control Epidemiological Studies

“…The percentage of cases or controls exposed for at least 10 years in the above studies is 0% [16,[18][19][20], less than 5% [21,25,27,28], less than 10% [23,24,26,29], not given [30].…”

“…The editorial of Cardis and Sadetzki takes further the remarks by Saracci and Samet, and leaves little doubt about the relevance of our criticisms, which we document on as follows ( Table 1): • of the 17 Interphone studies [16,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33], fewer than 10% of the exposed cases and controls had completed at least 10 years of cellphone latency or continued use, which means that over 90% had an inadequate exposure time. Since in most of the tumours 95%CI superior limit < 1 for OR<1, and 95%CI inferior limit > 1 for OR>1; 2 ORs decrease together with the increase of exposition and/or latency; n.r.…”

“…In Hardell's studies, participation is always much higher (88-90%) for both cases and controls [1,2]; • owing to the non-blind Interphone protocol, there is often a reduced participation in the study by the nonmobile users initially selected -in particular controls who are not affected by tumours, naturally less interested in the aims of the research than regular users, especially cases affected by tumours -and this represents a further factor of "dilution" of risk estimates. This "control selection bias" is recognised by the Interphone authors themselves [30], but in their view it does not cause reduction in estimated risk by more than 10%, which is true for the overall Interphone data, but in some studies this bias alone can result in a more significant reduction in risk assessment: more than 15% [18,28], more than 25% [21][22][23], and even more than 30% [20,33]. In Hardell studies, this bias does not occur, as the percentage participation is basically equivalent for the exposed and non-exposed cases and controls [1,2].…”

“…These data obviously are barely significant relative to today's intense use of cellphones, especially by those adopting them for work purposes. In Hardell's studies, MP use is reported to be more than 1000 hours for 194 cases and more than 2000 hours for 85 cases over at least 10 years, so that the average use of MPs ranges from over 16 to just more than 32 minutes per day for at least 10 years [1-4]; • in Interphone, the participation of the identified cases or controls in the study is low: 50% [24,30,31], 60% [18,20,28,32,33], 70% [16,19,21,23,25]. In Hardell's studies, participation is always much higher (88-90%) for both cases and controls [1,2]; • owing to the non-blind Interphone protocol, there is often a reduced participation in the study by the nonmobile users initially selected -in particular controls who are not affected by tumours, naturally less interested in the aims of the research than regular users, especially cases affected by tumours -and this represents a further factor of "dilution" of risk estimates.…”