Health and Safety Information 75
The scientific community at large therefore believes that the weight
of scientific evidence does not show an association between
exposure to Radio Frequency (RF) from cell phones and adverse
health outcomes. Still the scientific community has supported
additional research to address gaps in knowledge. Some of these
studies are described below.
Interphone Study
Interphone is a large international study designed to determine
whether cell phones increase the risk of head and neck cancer. A
report published in the International Journal of Epidemiology (June,
2010) compared cell phone usage for more than 5,000 people with
brain tumors (glioma and meningioma) and a similar number of
healthy controls.
Results of this study did NOT show that cell phones caused brain
cancer. In this study, most people had no increased risk of brain
cancer from using cell phones. For people with the heaviest use of
cell phones (an average of more than ½ hour per day, every day, for
over 10 years) the study suggested a slight increase in brain cancer.
However, the authors determined that biases and errors prevented
any conclusions being drawn from this data. Additional information
about Interphone can be found at
http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2010/pdfs/pr200_E.pdf.
Interphone is the largest cell phone study to date, but it did not
answer all questions about cell phone safety. Additional research is
being conducted around the world, and the FDA continues to monitor
developments in this field.