03/01/2007 - Another study connecting mobiles and brain cancer

This is yet another study from Lennart Hardell, Kjell Hansson Mild et al that has found statistically significant increases in cancer from prolonged mobile phone usage, with the following conclusions:

"We found for all studied phone types an increased risk for brain tumours, mainly acoustic neuroma and malignant brain tumours. OR increased with latency period, especially for astrocytoma grade III-IV. No consistent pattern of an increased risk was found for salivary gland tumours, NHL, or testicular cancer."

This is an interesting analysis of much of their previous work, and shows that with further pooled analysis the same trends are found. Funding needs to be available to conduct further research attempting to replicate Hardell et al's work, using the same controls and exposure metrics as they have.

Links:

[View paper in full (273 KB .pdf)]
[View paper in full (online version)]
[View abstract on PubMed]

Also in the news

Diagram on theorised mechanisms

This is an interesting (albeit unreferenced) diagram of postulated connections and relationships between EMFs and the health effects attributed to them.

[View diagram in a .pdf document (74.4 KB)]

Primary care consultations finds association with EMFs plausible

A new article of Swiss research has just summarised "In our survey, GPs often judged the association between the health problems and the suspected exposure to be plausible". It is only a survey study, with a relatively low response rate, therefore it is no means scientifically exhaustive - however, it is well worth a read as the summaries contain a fair amount of sensible logical reasoning that have significant merit in a area of science that remains so uncertain.

[View article summary on BioMed Central]

Council landed with GBP 180,000 bill for turning down a mast

A Cornish council has been ordered to pay £180,000 in legal costs after an unsuccessful battle to remove a controversial emergency radio mast. Councillors wanted the mast pulled down after it had been put up at Mawnan Smith, near Penryn, without approval. But company O2 Airwave appealed and Kerrier District Council withdrew from the inquiry after deciding it was unlikely to win.

With possible costs of this level, no wonder councils don't want to stand in the way of putting masts up.

[See original news story on BBC Online]

This page has links to content that requires a .pdf reader such as Adobe Acrobat Reader