24.12.2011 by emily Category Electromagnetic Health Blog
Press Release
Brain Tumor Pandemic—DNA Impacts from Mobile
Phones Implicated in New Analysis
December 24, 2011, Berkeley, CA, USA & Stockholm,
Sweden. An important new analysis, The Potential Impact of Mobile
Phone Use on Trends in Brain and CNS Tumors, was published today in the
journal Neurology & Neurophysiology. It can be downloaded without
cost at http://www.omicsonline.org/2155-9562/2155-9562-S5-003.pdf.
The paper is in a Special Issue of the journal titled “Brain Tumor.”
The study
raises very serious concerns about the potential for a large increase in brain
cancer incidence, resulting from widespread mobile phone use. The steep
increase in brain cancer will begin in approximately 15 years according to the
projections.
The paper, by researchers Örjan Hallberg in Sweden and L. Lloyd
Morgan in the U.S., first reviews biological effects from mobile phone use
reported in peer-reviewed studies, such as increased permeability of the
blood-brain barrier, deleterious effects on sperm, double strand breaks in DNA,
stress gene activation (indicating an exposure to a toxin), and increased risk
of an acoustic nerve tumor (acoustic neuroma) and brain cancer after 10 or more
years of mobile phone use. It then considered two established mechanisms for
the development of brain cancer—that mobile phone use decreases the efficiency
of the repair of mutated DNA and that mobile phone use increases the rate of
DNA mutations.
In developing the model from brain cancer registry data,
mathematical model parameters are selected which provide a best fit to the age
adjusted registry data. The model can be considered reasonably accurate
if it approximates both the age-specific brain cancer incidence (e.g., 30-34
year age cohort) and the age-adjusted brain cancer incidence from the cancer
registry data. It can then be used by the researchers to predict future brain
cancer incidence.
Based on a 30-year time between first mobile phone use and
diagnoses of brain cancer (latency time), the model predicts that there will be
a 100% increased incidence of brain cancer (2-fold) if DNA repair efficiency is
decreased by mobile phone use, and a 2,400% increase in brain tumors (25-fold)
if mobile phone use mutates DNA. The figure below, from the paper
illustrates these predictions.
Figure
3. Norwegian brain tumor age-adjusted rates per 100,000 person-years by
calendar year for reported data with 3 results from mobile phone use 1)
Increased DNA damage 2) no DNA repair and 3) has no effect.
The public health risk modeling process used in this analysis
was developed by Örjan Hallberg and has been successfully applied in other
illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease and melanoma.
Hallberg says, “Such
modeling, or risk projection, is important, whether for the climate or for
diseases, in that it allows public health contingency planning, should the
model be reasonable accurate. For example, will there be sufficient
neurosurgeons should brain tumors increase as the model predicts?
”
Morgan
says, “What this analysis shows is that, unless mobile phone usage behavior
patterns change significantly, we can reasonably expect a pandemic of brain
tumors, for which we are ill-prepared, beginning approximately 15 years from
now. Governments, as well as parents, physicians, schools and all citizens,
would be well advised to educate all persons under their care or influence
about the need to curtail the use of mobile phones and other radiation-emitting
consumer devices.
”
Media Contacts:
Europe:
Örjan Hallberg in Sweden
(oerjan.hallberg@tele2.se,
+ 46 (8) 605 4998).
North America: Lloyd Morgan in Berkeley, California, USA
Sr.
Research Fellow, Environmental Health Trust
(Lloyd.L.Morgan@gmail.com,
+510 841-4362).
http://electromagnetichealth.org/electromagnetic-health-blog/brain-tumor-pandemic/?mid=560
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