According to the results, 11 out of 550 male rats developed brain cancer tumors after long-term exposure to the types of radiation, GSM and CDMA, most commonly utilized in the U.S.
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A comprehensive study conducted by the USA government has found a link between cell phone use and cancer according to a report released on Friday 27 May 2016.
The initial results of the NTP study were published on May 27.
National Toxicology Program associate director John Bucher admits that further investigation is will need to be conducted to determine of cellphone radiation can cause cancer tumors.
But Professor Kevin McConway, an expert in applied statistics at The Open University, said: “It’s good that the US National Toxicology Program is researching these issues”.
The study, conducted on rats, showed brain and heart cancers occurred when the rodents were exposed to radio frequencies emitted by mobiles phones.
“If cellphones cause cancer, they don’t cause a lot of cancer”, he said in an interview. Complete findings will be released by fall 2017. Rats not exposed to the frequencies did not develop those cancers.
In two years, the radiated rats were exposed to the cellphone radiation 18 hours a day for seven days a week.
Since about 1986 USA brain cancer deaths had not increased or decreased, Brawley said.
The bulk of the research on this topic has not found a link between cell phone radiation and tumor risk, although the possibility had not been ruled out, said Salvatore Insinga, a neurosurgeon at Northwell Health’s Neuroscience Institute in Manhasset, New York.
A USA government-funded study says there is a correlation between phone use and cancer.
The study is thought to be one of the largest and most in-depth analyses of mobile phones and cancers. Similarly, between 2% and 7% of the irradiated male rats developed heart tumors, compared with only about 2% of the irradiated female rats and none of the control rats. Bucher said the levels the rats were subjected to would be considered “heavy”.
Given these trends, the risk of cancer related to a cellphone is relatively low, Brawley said. They find it odd that no female rats grew tumors.
Authors of the study acknowledged its limitations.
Another hint: Brain cancer rates have not shot up. The rats were exposed beginning when they were in the womb and continuing through their lives. Some scientists say that this can only mean that the development of the tumors was a fluke. Researchers have yet to understand why the results are different between male and female rats. Lauer notes that only a handful of rats developed cancer in each experiment. “People don’t seem to call me much”, Bucher told reporters in a telephone briefing.
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Both Brawley and Bucher said that would not change how they used their own cellphones. “It may have no relevance”.
