Interphone Study Design Flaws

(08:26 min) 

Lloyd Morgan, B.Sc., lead author of the landmark report, "Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern", discusses the flaws in the Interphone study that render it unreliable as a gauge of risk of brain tumors from cell phones. The 11 design flaws grossly underestimate the risk, and even still, the Interphone study, just published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, still shows statistically significant increased risk of brain tumors after 10 years of cellphone use. This is ominous because toxicants often take decades to show tumor risks, and we are seeing it at just 10 years. Cell phone usage rates in the Interphone study were just a fraction of cell phone usage rates today among adults and children alike. Finally, without explanation, results were not published for acoustic neuromas and salivary gland tumors which are the tumors closest to the ear against which one places the cell phone. 

Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern, Science, Spin and the Truth Behind Interphone

(02:04 min) 

August 25, 2009

Cellphones Cause Brain Tumors

A new report was released today by the International EMF Collaborative entitled "Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern, Science, Spin and the Truth Behind Interphone". 

Groups affiliated with the report include Powerwatch and the EM Radiation Research Trust in the UK, and the EMR Policy Institute, ElectromagneticHealth.org  and The Peoples Initiative Foundation in the US.

The exposé discusses research on cellphones and brain tumors and concludes:

• There is a risk of brain tumors from cellphone use;

• Telecom funded studies underestimate the risk of brain tumors, and;

• Children have larger risks than adults for brain tumors.

This report, sent to government leaders and media today, details eleven design flaws of the 13-country, Telecom-funded Interphone study. The Interphone study, begun in 1999, was intended to determine the risks of brain tumors, but its full publication has been held up for years. Components of this study published to date reveal what the authors call a 'systemic-skew', greatly underestimating brain tumor risk.

The design flaws include categorizing subjects who used portable phones (which emit the same microwave radiation as cellphones,) as 'unexposed'; exclusion of many types of brain tumors; exclusion of people who had died, or were too ill to be interviewed, as a consequence of their brain tumor; and exclusion of children and young adults, who are more vulnerable.

International scientists endorsing the report include Ronald B. Herberman, MD, Director Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute; David Carpenter, MD, Director, Institute for Health and the Environment, University at Albany; Martin Blank, PhD, Associate Professor of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University; Professor Yury Grigoriev, Chairman of Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, and many others.

Abstract  The very rapid worldwide increase in mobile phone use in the last decade has generated considerable interest in the possible health effects of exposure to radio frequency (RF) fields. A multinational case–control study, INTERPHONE, was set-up to investigate whether mobile phone use increases the risk of cancer and, more specifically, whether the RF fields emitted by mobile phones are carcinogenic. The study focused on tumours arising in the tissues most exposed to RF fields from mobile phones: glioma, meningioma, acoustic neurinoma and parotid gland tumours. In addition to a detailed history of mobile phone use, information was collected on a number of known and potential risk factors for these tumours. The study was conducted in 13 countries. Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the UK using a common core protocol. This paper describes the study design and methods and the main characteristics of the study population. INTERPHONE is the largest case–control study to date investigating risks related to mobile phone use and to other potential risk factors for the tumours of interest and includes 2,765 glioma, 2,425 meningioma, 1,121 acoustic neurinoma, 109 malignant parotid gland tumour cases and 7,658 controls. Particular attention was paid to estimating the amount and direction of potential recall and participation biases and their impact on the study results.  

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