Study into cellphones and cancer released Tuesday - Updated
The Science Media Centre reports that the multinational case-control Interphone Study will be released on Tuesday at 11.30am New Zealand time.
“The study, which ran over 10 years, included research from New Zealand and is the most comprehensive study to date looking at the health implications of using the mobile devices that have become so pervasive in society,” reads on the centre’s e-letter.
The Centre is holding an online briefing for journalists to coincide with the release of the research featuring New Zealand experts who were involved in Interphone and be able to comment “on everything from radio frequencies to brain tumors”.
The Interphone results found that only the heaviest cellphone users may be at a risk, although even this appears debatable. As Martin Gledhill, Senior Science Advisor at the National Radiation Laboratory comments:
“While the full Interphone results overall do not suggest that cellphone use is associated with increased risks of brain tumours, the detailed analysis shows a small increased risk for the heaviest users (where use is quantified by hours, but not when it is quantified by the number of calls), but not for anyone else. The researchers caution against interpreting this as a cause and effect relationship as there is evidence that it could have arisen from biases in the data. The fact that laboratory research, including lifetime studies of animals, does not suggest that radiofrequency fields play a role in cancer development also weakens the likelihood that there is a causal relationship.”
The Science Media Centre has full coverage of its briefinghere.
