Catherine Kleiber: Cellphones implicated in cancer

Catherine Kleiber: Cellphones implicated in cancer

July 27, 2013

An award-winning TV news story from KTVU in Oakland, Calif., publicized the link between women carrying their cellphones in their bras and breast cancer. The coverage includes medical images showing cancer occurring just below where the phone was carried.

Their experiences and medical images provide a compelling link between cancer and wireless devices that should not be ignored. Physicians should be warning patients against keeping cell phones in standby (able to receive a call) against their body, particularly their breasts. They should caution patients to keep the phones turned completely off when carried against their body. They should caution patients to make calls only in emergencies and keep calls short.

The news story linking breast cancer and cell phones is not the first evidence linking cancer to radiation from wireless devices.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a committee of the World Health Organization, classified radiofrequency radiation -- the radiation utilized by wireless devices -- as a class 2B possible human carcinogen in May 2011 due to the strength of the evidence connecting brain tumor formation to cellphone use.  A number of researchers feel that there is sufficient evidence to change the classification to probable carcinogen.

Previous studies have found links between police shoulder radios and breast cancer; radar gun use and testicular cancer in policemen that set devices in their laps; and increased cancer in military radio operators, to name a few. A recent study found that the rate of advanced breast cancer in women between 25 and 39 years of age nearly doubled between 1976 and 2009. This suggests a new environmental exposure. The breast cancer videos provide a smoking gun level of evidence that radiofrequency radiation exposure from cellphones causes breast cancer. Radiofrequency exposure from other wireless consumer devices, transmitters and electrical pollution are likely to contribute as well.

Cancers in other parts of the body should also be examined for links to radiation from wireless devices. For instance, do men who carry their cellphones in their pockets experience a higher level of testicular cancer? The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network wrote in their 2012 report"pancreatic cancer will leap to become the second leading cause of cancer death before 2020, and possibly as early as 2015, only three years from now." Is this related to the habit of many men to carry their cellphones on their waistbands in close proximity to their pancreases? Many women's purses would also put their cellphones in a similar vicinity.

Cellphones on standby causing cancer suggests we should soon see or already be seeing a rise in a variety of cancers. The recent popularity of using Wi-Fi on laptops and tablets, which utilize a similar pulsed microwave radiation and deliver a very strong dose of radiation to the abdomen, may well cause an increase in abdominal cancers of various sorts. Increases in rates of lymphoma and leukemia are likely from the same source, since both increase with radiation exposures.

Links have already been made between cellphone use and brain tumors, parotid gland tumors and esophageal cancer. Other cancers have not been studied.

"The Influence of Being Physically Near to a Cell Phone Transmission Mast on the Incidence of Cancer," an article in a German journal by Horst Eger and others reports that "after five years' operation of the transmitting installation, the relative risk of getting cancer had trebled for the residents of the area [within 400 meters of the cell phone transmission mast]." The RF radiation levels within the 400 meters of the cell phone tower were 100 times higher than the levels outside that proximity. The risk of breast cancer within this area was so significantly elevated, also occurring on average nearly 20 years earlier, that the authors propose "A possible question for future research is whether breast cancer can be used as a 'marker cancer' for areas where there is high contamination from electromagnetic radiation."

Thus, the wireless devices increase cancer risks not just for their users, but increase the risk for those around them during use and for those around the antenna infrastructure that supports the wireless devices, constantly emitting biologically active levels of radiation. In other words, what additional cancer risk should we be asked to take on so that others can call from the bread aisle of the supermarket to ask whether they should get white or whole wheat?

We urgently need to update our outdated thermally based safety limits (what does not cook you, does not hurt you) to biologically based safety limits (protective against biological harm, including cancer). The wireless explosion has now made exposure to radiofrequency radiation involuntary and unavoidable. Unless preventative measures are taken, we can expect to see a continued dramatic increase in cancer rates, especially breast cancer. However, Congress is unlikely to act without public outcry given the money telecom industries contribute to election campaigns and the influence the industry exerts through advertising.

Kleiber, of Waterloo, Wis., has personal experience with radiofrequency sickness and is author and webmaster of electricalpollution.com. 

http://www.wvgazette.com/Opinion/OpEdCommentaries/201307260126