The World Health Organization, cell phones, and cancer—what's actually going on

Today, I was surprised to see posts popping up on Twitter implying that the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research into Cancer had declared radiation from cell phones to be a cancer risk. As you've read here before, and as sources like the National Cancer Institute have reported, the evidence linking cell phone use and cancer risk is actually pretty slim. So I was waiting to hear about some new study or analysis. Instead, it looks like this is really a story about context.

If you don't have the context, it's easy to look at the headlines and assume that the WHO just told you to stop using your cell phone. But, add context, and the news looks very different. In fact, with context in place, it appears the WHO isn't saying cell phones are dangerous, and isn't saying anything you haven't heard before.

Science blogger Ed Yong works for Cancer Research UK. He wrote up a very nice explanation of what the WHO announcement really means.

It means that there is some evidence linking mobile phones to cancer, but it is too weak to make any strong conclusions. Specifically, IARC's panel said that the evidence that mobile phones pose a health risk was "limited" for two types of brain tumours - glioma and acoustic neuroma - and "inadequate" when it comes to other types of cancer.

The Chairman of the group, Dr Jonathan Samet, said, "The conclusion means that there could be some risk, and therefore we need to keep a close watch for a link between cell phones and cancer risk."

IARC classifies different things according to whether they are likely to cause cancer, from tobacco to viruses to certain jobs. They are the gold standard for this sort of thing. They have five possible categories of risk:

Group 1 is the highest, reserved for things like smoking, asbestos, alcohol and so on. It means that there's extremely strong evidence that the thing in question causes cancer.

Group 2A includes things that are "probably carcinogenic to humans". Here, the evidence is "limited" in humans, but "sufficient" from animal studies.

Group 2B - this is the one that mobile phones now fall under - means something is "possibly carcinogenic to humans". It means there is "limited evidence" that something causes cancer in people, and even the evidence from animal studies is "less than sufficient". Group 2B means that there is some evidence for a risk but it's not that convincing. This group ends up being a bit of a catch-all category, and includes everything from carpentry to chloroform.

Basically, this is where we start talking about semantics, and the difference between official, bureaucratic categories and how people actually talk about risk in everyday life. When you hear someone say, "Using your cell phone probably won't give you cancer. The evidence supporting that idea is very weak," they are, more or less, saying the same thing that the World Health Organization is saying. Only the WHO has also added the (very reasonable) assertion that more research is needed if we want to say anything definitive about cell phones and cancer.

Image: Hello Operator, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from derekolson's photostream

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

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Ant

Good thing I don’t have a cell phone. :P
cmdtacos

Mmmm, fair and reasonable reporting based on facts and science gets me hot.
Anonymous

what about full body scans?
Anonymous

40% looks like big risk for me ….

“one study of past cell phone use (up to the year 2004), showed a 40% increased risk for gliomas in the highest category of heavy users (reported average: 30 minutes per day
over a 10â€year period).”

http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf
- TraverJ
  
  #3 – That study relied on people remembering their cell phone usage for 10 plus years. The human brain is horrible at actually remembering events correctly. Also these people already had cancers and were happy to have something (cell phones) to blame.
- cmdtacos
  
  @ Anon #3: A 40% increase is relative to the initial risk and might not even be statistically significant.
  
  Gliomas are the most common brain tumours, and info I’m getting is putting them at somewhere around 50% of all brain tumours. There are about 13 000 people that die of brain tumours a year in the US, so if we assume that half of them are from gliomas that’s a 0.002% chance of dying from a glioma. Cell phone use may balloon that risk to 0.0028%! GASP!
- tiamat_the_red
  
  @Anon #3,
  
  A 40% risk would be a big risk if it was reproducable but it hasn’t been. One study of many saying that isn’t very convincing. Say, 50% of the studies saying something similar would be pretty convincing, or at least worrying. However, if you open up the article that Maggie linked to you’ll see (emphasis mine)
  
  “But the majority of papers, including those from InterPhone and the Danish study, have found that mobile phone use does not increase the risk of brain cancer, or any other type of cancer, for at least 10 years of use.”
  
  which makes me think that I’ll save my worries for things like being overweight or discovering an acute allergy or something.
emmdeeaych

What’s the worst thing that happens if people get the wrong idea and turn off their cell phones? This seems like a harmless thing for a people to be wrong about. In fact, I can only see upsides to this sort of mass-wrongness.
- natelarsen
  
  Bad information is bad information. Bad decisions based on bad assumptions are still bad. We already have a weird thing about not trusting science as a society, let’s not start saying “oh why not”.
- Crashproof
  
  Quack products that are supposed to prevent cellphone-induced cancer. Loss of access to a highly useful and occasionally lifesaving or democratizing device. Public cell phone bans.
  - emmdeeaych
    
    I can’t imagine those absurd things happening.
    
    And I would personally love to see cell phone users relegated to a windy area outside the building.
Mister44

Fun Fact – Chuck Norris is a Class 1 carcinogen. He will kick the healthy cells right out of you.
- Anonymous
  
  Your comment belongs on some obscure alt.binaries forum.
CognitiveDissident

Here’s a book (of which I have no connection) that you might enjoy reading:

Disconnect (The TRUTH about Cell Phone RADIATION, What the INDUSTRY Has Done to Hide It, and How to PROTECT Your FAMILY) BY Dr. Devra Davis

Guess what?
Cell Phone Radiation unravels Human DNA.
No matter how much money the cell phone industry throws at Junk Scientists, it still unravels.
(And even if it doesn’t heat the tissue, it still unravels.)
Anonymous

I’m confused. Is there _insufficient_ evidence that using a cell phone could give you cancer, or, as boingboing said, is…”the evidence supporting that idea…very weak.”

Because of course the difference is that, with _insufficient_ evidence it could in the future turn out that cell phones actually do contribute to cancer, but up until that seminal study, there was insufficient _proof_. Versus there being evidence that, in fact, the chances of getting cancer from using a cell phone is very weak.

Sorry to be so confusing.
Shart Tsung

+1 for the anti-social. I don’t even get cell service at my house anyway.

Thanks AT&T for your shitty coverage, you saved my life!
Shart Tsung

Thanks for clearing things up, I didn’t know what to take from the CNN.com headline “Radiation from cell phones may cause cancer”.

We’ve already got one person in our family fighting with terminal cancer(myeloma) and its been a struggle for the entire family. Why won’t they find a cure!?

It’s almost like the powers that be are counting on cancer deaths as a form of pop. control.
thebelgianpanda

So what you are saying is 10 minutes on a cell phone meeting is potentially safer than a ten minute conversation with the other party in person over a couple of martinis?
Dan Mac

Paging Dr. Jenny McCarthy
noen

These mixed signals from official sources are why people lose faith and start to believe in folk rumors like the anti-vaxers. Add to that everyone knows that corporations would sell babies arsenic if they thought they could get away with it and it’s little wonder people don’t believe a word they say.

Pharma corps have put products on the market they knew resulted in death. They have falsified research, they have told researchers to falsify data. It’s a wonder people believe them at all.
ringer37

There seems to be a lot of “maybes” and “perhaps” and “a possibility”s surrounding this idea of cellphones causing cancers. I don’t know…I’d like to have some more concrete evidence linking cellphones to cancer, but…I also really don’t want to get cancer, lol. I’ll probably just stick to using the headset, instead of holding the thing to my ear, makes me feel better.

Zach @ the Turbulence Training Blog
lakelady

here’s an interesting, and I think valuable, blog posting by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on this very subject http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/20/gupta-cell-phones-brain-tumors-and-a-wired-earpiece/

Bottom line, why not simply use an earpiece? When it comes to my brain I’d personally rather be safe than sorry.
El Stinko

Wait… alcohol gives you cancer? I’ve heard of excessive alcohol consumption giving you all sorts of problems but cancer was never one of them.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Yes, alcohol can give you cancer. Particular cancers of the path that the alcohol follows from your glass to your stomach.
Anonymous

@CognitiveDissident: “Cell Phone Radiation unravels Human DNA.” You know what also unravels DNA? Topoisomerases: proteins that are part of the normal routine of DNA transcription. You would die if your DNA didn’t unravel.

http://www.pdb.org/pdb/101/motm.do?momID=73

So stop credulously following every crackpot that uses alarming sounding words, and think for yourself.
- CognitiveDissident
  
  From what I read “Topoisomerases are enzymes that unwind and wind DNA, in order for DNA to control the synthesis of proteins, and to facilitate DNA replication.”
  So, in other words, they occur naturally, and we wouldn’t be here without the enzymes “unravelling” DNA.
  You are inferring that just because an event (unravelling of DNA) occurs naturally, ANY occurrence of that event MUST be a harmless, natural event.
  Isn’t that extrapolating a little bit (or a LOT)?
  
  Maybe a better term (than “unravelling”) DNA would be “breaking” DNA, because that’s what cell phone radiation does!
  
  from Dr. Devra Davis’ book (pg 60):
  “…the investigators used living rats and subjected them to just two hours of radio frequency radiation at about the same level then being used in cell phones. The results were troubling right away–DNA from the cells of the brains of the radio-frequency-radiation-exposed rats was not normal, but broken. The broken brain cells found in these cell-phone-exposed animals are the same as those known to occur in cancer. New and dangerous compounds had formed inside the DNA–free radicals now known to give rise to cancer and other serious health problems.”
  from (pp. 130-131)
  “The impact of Adlkofer’s work showing genetic damage from cell phone exposure…is hard to overestimate. And the findings confirmed results produced decades earlier by several other teams of investigators. Here was a group of distinguished researchers showing what many physicists assumed was impossible. Damage occurred to cells that had nothing at all to do with detectable changes in heat. Radio frequency signals at levels that could be found every day caused havoc inside cells…”
  
  I really hope that cellular technology is much safer than the real research implies, but it will be very sad if professional doubters allay everyone’s concerns, and everything that could have been done WASN’T done. I wish that the companies would listen to people like Dr. Devra Davis, instead of formulating an action plan to deal with the negative publicity.
  
  I think that there is ample evidence that you should be concerned about cell phone microwave (non-ionizing) radiation, but when money is thrown at researchers (who realize that funding will end with the wrong result), it isn’t REALLY science, it’s an average day at the Ministry of Truth, Doubt-Merchant-Division.â€
Anonymous

Cellphones: as likely to give you cancer as carpentry.
- Anonymous
  
  I got carpentry once … I wouldn’t, want it again.
JohnSF

Reminds me of that old Britcom, Yes Minister. One episode in particular showed just how such a cover-your-ass bureaucratese report gets made. That series should be mandatory watching in school. As typical, the press reported the opposite of what it should have, that cellphones probably DO NOT CAUSE CANCER. Shame on them. Glad to see not everyone fell for it.
cinemajay

@Maggie, I def. hear what you’re saying. I think the lead to the article in the STrib gets people going right off the bat:

“A respected international panel of experts says cellphones are possible cancer-causing agents, putting them in the same category as the pesticide DDT, gasoline engine exhaust and coffee.”

Ref: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/wellness/122873428.html
- turn_self_off
  
  DDT and coffee? Sounds a bit like arson, murder and jaywalking (oh my, what a criminal).
shadowfirebird

According to the boffin on UK’s Channel Four news, pickled vegetables are also in group 2B. Also coffee and diesel.

Wikipedia appears to bear this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2B_carcinogens .

I also see “talc based body powders”…
Gordon JC Pearce

Mobile phones don’t give you brain tumours. There is no mechanism by which they *could* give you brain tumours. It just simply cannot happen.

Mobile phones do not make your brain heat up, except in as much as they get warm in use because they’re drawing more power from the battery. Holding an insulated plastic box to your ear makes your brain heat up, because it insulates one side of your head. You’d be amazed how much heat your head radiates off. If you block that heat radiation, your head will warm up. This is how hats work.

It’s not exactly difficult, you know.
Anonymous

There has been a lot of very interesting studies made during the past 15 years.

Perhaps most interesting is that the cell phone companies all got immunity a decade ago against being sued for the possibility that RF from cell phones cause health problems.

As an electronics engineer I studied the science and am absolutely sure that there is a problem. I have no absolute proof whcih I can give to others, but I have a list of 14 things which you can do which are free or very low cost which will reduce the RF from your cell phone by at least 10X
http://www.henrylahore.com/ReduceCellPhoneRF.html
jphilby

That noone can can provide a mechanism for cancer from microwaves does not mean that microwaves can’t cause cancer. Some serious and well-known scientists worry about it. So I read: there is -some- probability that cellphone transmissions cause cancer. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

The evidence for the dangers of second-hand smoke (good luck finding a series of studies proving -that- definitively) — resulting in way-out-of-line, freakout legal prohibitions — is somewhat in the same category. In the face of subtle evidence, what people -want- to believe conditions what they choose to believe. That doesn’t change reality one iota, but it explains how so many people can be in climate-change denial.

IF I were a phone-user, and concerned, I’d use a wired headset with the phone in my pocket or on my belt. Or use a mike that is also a speaker.
- Patrick Austin
  
  Just because some very serious well know scientists worry about something, does not mean you should worry about something. Some very serious and well known scientists are well known only because they either inject themselves into issues outside their area of expertise or because they’re fear mongers.
  
  Obviously there is a small probability that cell phones cause cancer. However, there’s no known mechanism for them to contribute to cancer and there’s no good statistical evidence that they have anything to do with cancer. That puts cell phones in the same category as, oh I dunno, coffee or sex or electric fans or reading books or thinking about eating cake too much.
  - Teller
    
    “Just because some very serious well know scientists worry about something, does not mean you should worry about something. Some very serious and well known scientists are well known only because they either inject themselves into issues outside their area of expertise or because they’re fear mongers.”
    
    Very handy thought. Hello, Buick Enclave.
giax

Ladylake, I’m not sure I understand how exactly using a bluetooth earpiece is going to protect you from the radiation of the mobile phone.
Whenever I’ve had to use a wireless headset at work (connected to a landline), my head feels boiled after just half an hour on the phone. And some calls last all shift.

Shart, there’s no economical incentive for any company to come with a cancer cure. Imagine if it was something as simple as a vitamin? When a cancer victim is forced to spend $ 300,000 in chemotherapy and other radiation cures marketed by the medical industry, they would/will shut down anyone who will find a $ 20 prevention/fix. The cancer industry is too profitable and protective to allow that.
RFGuy73

“Radiation” and “Microwave” are still terms being used by these studies. First of all, technically, energy transmission is radiation, but for the rest of non-technical folks, radiation has been always thought like nuclear plants. Your TV, microwave oven and dryers are producing much more power when you are at the same distance as your cell phone these days. That’s why mom says don’t stand in front of the TV too close. And I won’t stand behind a microwave oven when it’s running.

Antenna from a tower or roof top sites are a different story. But the FCC has pretty good rules and regulations for that, given the carriers follow the rules. You, as a landlord or people living close to those antennas can always request a maximum power exposure study from the carriers and check it yourself.

By the way, the spectrum used is not called “microwave.” I am very tired of hearing this from folks equating anything in the air that is energized “microwave.” Come on. There is difference between molecule changing (ionization) and simple heating. So far, the only cause of damage that I can see myself is the heat generated by the phone and battery. But that’s the same thing for us not to touch the hot stove, the hot iron, the hot toaster or even some of us let our kids watch tv or play video games within 1 feet of the screens for hours.

Let’s be sensible. Continue with studies, but let’s not be too alarmed and conclude without evidence. And let’s not complaint about phone service (especially at home) when no one wants antennas in their neighborhood. Physics hasn’t had a significant breakthroughs for over 50 years on transmission theory.

By the way, did they follow and study a bunch of RF Engineers instead? They will be a good studying group as they are the ones who use the cell phones most and design and work around the cell phone antennas.
- emmdeeaych
  
  I have a degree in toxicology, and I’m not a 3rd grader. Kthxbai.
Antinous / Moderator

I would suggest a study proving that cell phones emit radiation that destroys the common sense and courtesy parts of the brain, but it would be one of those yeah, and water is wet studies.
- Anonymous
  
  I would suggest a study proving that cell phones emit radiation that destroys the common sense and courtesy parts of the brain, but it would be one of those yeah, and water is wet studies.
  
  Like most Internet commentators, those parts of my brain are already seriously underdeveloped, so I shall continue to avoid cell phones.
Anonymous

Oh, great. Another reason to dislike Twitter – spread unnecessary semi-panic. If you’re concerned, just use a wired headset and keep the phone in your pocket.
shadowfirebird

@RFGuy73:

“By the way, the spectrum used is not called “microwave.” I am very tired of hearing this from folks equating anything in the air that is energized “microwave.” ”

Actually, point of information: Microwave refers to anything between .3 and 300Ghz. GSM falls inside the low end of that.

It seems to me that “microwave” is as much of a term that is falsely charged with emotion as “radiation”. It’s just a name for part of the spectrum.
Ugly Canuck

It’s the effects of cell phpnes on the pollinators that has me worried…what happened to the bees this spring?

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-06-30/world/bee.decline.mobile.phones_1_bee-populations-cell-phone-radiation-ofcom?_s=PM:WORLD

The most recent study, now making some waves:

http://www.kokopelli.asso.fr/documentation/favre.pdf

Preliminary, true, but the importance of the topic (that is, of the bees) merits more research asap.
William George

My guess:

It doesn’t cause cancer. But it does make your genitals shrivel if you keep it in your front pocket.
emmdeeaych

“Group 2B means that there is some evidence for a risk but it’s not that convincing. This group ends up being a bit of a catch-all category, and includes everything from carpentry to chloroform.“
MrJM

WHO has classified cellphones as “Group 2B -Possibly carcinogenic to humans.” Other members of WHO’s Group 2B include such terrifying “agents” as coffee and pickled vegetables and the occupations of fire fighting and carpentry. http://goo.gl/TXmCb

And of special note to those who insist on peeing themselves over news reports regarding cell phone hazards, WHO has also classified dry cleaning as “Group 2B.”
- emmdeeaych
  
  both firefighting and carpentry pose significant inhalation hazards.
- emmdeeaych
  
  also, that sweet aroma from your dry cleaning is perchloroethylene (tetrachloroethylene). It’s very bad for you over time.
  
  http://scorecard.goodguide.com/chemical-profiles/html/tetrachloroethylene.html
Teller

Anxiously Waiting For the Day:

“Hey, buddy, take it outside. I don’t want your secondhand radiation.”
jpollock

I’m wondering what the animal studies were that showed cell phones causing cancer, since that seems to be a key part of the definition. I would expect that a study like that to be pretty well advertised!
arikol

Group 2B
Coffee, chloroform, pickled vegetables, cellphones.

Yeah, this is the sound of me not panicking!
Matthew_H

W.H.O. SAYS YOUR IPHONE MIGHT GIVE YOU CANCER. READ ALL ABOUT IT IN OUR SPECIAL REPORT!

Eugh. This will go on for weeks. Crap.
Anonymous

Devra Davis is, on the issue of cell phones, a crackpot. She cherry picks the literature to find studies that support her contention, and ignores or misrepresents studies that don’t support it, or which contradict or fail to replicate the studies she touts.

See here:

http://www.skepticnorth.com/2010/12/devra-davis-disconnected-from-science-part-i/
http://www.skepticnorth.com/2010/12/devra-davis-disconnected-from-science-part-ii/

for but one response to her work. Here’s a general one:

http://skepticblog.org/2010/12/07/cell-phones-and-cancer/#more-11108
Anonymous

My, my … all these doubting, dissing T’s. *So* hard to give up the toys, isn’t it?
Anonymous

ever wondered how much radiation your phone emits ?
every phone soled in the us and approved by the FCC has a Radiation Value for head and body
known as S.A.R (Specific Absorption Rate)
you can find this data and more by searching the free database
at http://cellphones-radiation-ratings.com/